


dis manibus

by archaeologies



Category: Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth
Genre: & i guess its kind of? more like a last of us au than generic zombies maybe, AU, Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone is Dead, F/F, M/M, anyway for protagshipping week !!, every part of it, gyea anyway uh, its a zombie apocalypse au bcs i love cliches, its def inspired by tlou so, like SERIOUSLY this whole thing is so cliched, minor gore but its not really detailed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-05-28 07:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6321196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archaeologies/pseuds/archaeologies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Souji doesn’t want to say it will all be okay because he doesn’t want to have to hear anyone tell him that it won’t be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I. THE MAGICIAN

Alexithymia (noun) – the inability to express your feelings

 

**i. power**

Matchstick legs. Matchstick legs, chipped at the knee that can’t support his weight and tremble. The motion rocks his stomach, leaving him sick, dizzy. There’s a tang in his mouth that’s either from nausea, blood, or sucking on metal for hours at a time. Hands on his hips, tiny, tiny hands, digging cautiously into his skin and pulling him backwards with all the force their arms are capable of, which admittedly isn’t a lot.

His voice catches, tearing and shredding his throat, and his words can’t beat the screaming. Sticky palms cement on the handle of his katana, and shaking shoulders collapse, dropping the weapon to the floor.

“It’s not fair. It’s... It’s not fair!” Fading orange hair torn from its roots. A shelf kicked in frustration. “We killed them all! We fought and we killed them all so we should be fine! It should be over! It-”

Laboured breaths but a sharp tongue. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t... Don’t apologise. Don’t make this your fault. Don’t.”

A weak smile. A watered down version of a trained and practiced smile that would greet hundreds every day, that would help and serve and provide, that should be able to continue to help and comfort, that shouldn’t have to stop. Slender lips vibrate lightly to match eyes watering with tears. And silence. Extensive, endless silence, that continues even when it is shattered.

He hates playing the leader, but one of them has to. “So, what do you want to do now?”

The fingers digging into his sides become claws.

“If I’m going to die, I want to die as me.”

The claws tear the meat from his bones, and yet he does not bleed. He is not even noticeably injured. The claws keep pulling. He nods, and reaches towards his back.

A second nod follows his. “Hanamura. Give it to Hanamura.”

“No. No no no no. We’re not- I’m not doing that. Never.”

“Please.”

Cold metal touches colder blood. A lump of pure terror clogs in his throat, but the gun changes hands. One gun. Their only gun. They only use it in emergencies. In this specific kind of emergency. After all, they only have a limited amount of bullets.

Claws on his back. “We’ll wait outside.”

The nod is resolved this time. “There are things I need to say privately anyway.”

The claws are hands, held tightly in his own. They’re led away from the scene of a man towering over another with a loaded gun. They’re taken far enough away to ensure they can’t hear the gunshot.

There’s nothing they can do to avoid it, or change it, or fix it. When the gun is handed back, they’re told she couldn’t say what she needed to in the end. And neither could he.

 

**ii. action**

No matter how many times he hears it, Seta Souji cannot get used to the sound of bones shattering. His shoulders rise and launch forward at the horrid combination of squelching and crunching, his teeth are set on edge and bile rises in his throat. So when Satonaka Chie brings her leg down in one swell swoop and delivers a swift stomp that flattens a man’s skull, he looks away. His cousin Nanako tightens her grip on his hand, but she doesn’t. She never looks away, no matter how hard Souji tries to make her.

Hanamura Yosuke whines that Chie has gotten brain on his clothes again, and Amagi Yukiko remarks that it looks like rain is on the way, so that will wash it off. Yosuke purses his lips, but says nothing.

“If we’re done clearing the area, let’s set up camp for the night here,” Souji sighs. “We don’t want to get caught in the rain, right Nanako?”

“Right.” She bobs her head in agreement. “But I don’t want to sleep near...”

Everyone follows her line of sight, though they didn’t need to. They didn’t want to sleep next to it either.

Yukiko taps a slender finger against her chin. Nails that were once neatly filed to perfection are dull, chipped and uneven. “I think,” she says softly, “I saw a building not far from here.”

Yosuke stretches. “Nope. We said we weren’t trying buildings again. Not after that ambush in the diner.”

“C’mon Yosuke-kun,” Chie bounces from side to side, as she speaks. “Just because every other time we’ve tried to set up a permanent base has been a disaster doesn’t mean one night will end badly!”

“Unbelievable,” Yosuke says bluntly, his eyes wide and his mouth a solid frown, “absolutely unbelievable. That in one sentence you can point out _exactly why staying inside is a bad idea_ and then also _deny_ that staying inside is a bad idea,” he shakes his head. “You’re really something else, Satonaka.”

Chie takes this moment to notice a stubborn piece of flesh stuck to the heel of her shoe and try to scrape it off. Souji can’t help but feel this reinforces his point.

“I wouldn’t suggest it if I wasn’t sure it was safe,” Yukiko rubs a hand up and down her left arm, “but I don’t think this is going to be a light shower. I think we could be at risk of a storm.”

Souji adds, “They’re more active during rain anyway. If there’s a building nearby we can use for shelter, I’d much rather face our chances there.”

The scorn in Yosuke’s voice drips from every syllable. “And here I thought we elected you leader because you were the smart one!”

“We elected Souji-kun as leader because he’s the only one with a plan of action,” Yukiko snaps.

“And he’s got a gun,” Chie chimes, apparently satisfied with the bloody state of her shoes now.

“Yosuke, I know you’re nervous,” Souji puts years of working with children and animals to use, and lets his voice flow softly, comfortingly, convincingly, “but this will only be for a few days. It won’t be like the diner, or the inn, or Junes-”

With the mention of Junes, Yosuke’s entire posture changes. His defensive slump becomes a straight back, his concerned furrowed brows become sharp and angled, and his lips twist unpleasantly under his elegant nose. “Right! Fine! Whatever!” Yosuke throws his hands up. “But when this ends badly, don’t come crying to me, and don’t expect me to bury your dead!”

“No one’s going to die, Yosuke,” Souji replies sternly. His eyes are on the disgruntled boy, but his words aren’t for him. His words are for the girl at his side, with her hair tied back in a straggly pink ribbon and her white sleeves a dull grey after enduring the dirt and the rain and the cold for so long. “We’ll stay until the rain passes, and then we continue our journey.”

Yosuke thinks that Souji’s goal is unobtainable. He’s always thought it is. He used to try and convince him to give up on it, to start looking for a safe zone, for an uninfected area, for something better than just wandering through abandoned cities and torn up farmland, but he’s given up on that too now. Souji doesn’t know what Yosuke wants anymore. He doesn’t think Yosuke knows anymore either.

He shrugs. Chie barks, “Alright then! Yukiko, lead the way!”

Yukiko’s eyes glance between Yosuke and the others, and her gentle mouth curls into a shape of concern. The expression lasts a moment before she collects herself, and holds out a hand towards Nanako, who runs to hold it. Chie moves to Nanako’s other side, boxing her in, protectively walking half a step before her, and Souji lags behind her, his katana out despite his confidence that the area is safe.

Yosuke drags his feet at the back of the group. Souji avoids looking behind him, and gives Yosuke the privacy to do or say what he needs to. He doesn’t hear any muffled crying, not this time, but he doesn’t doubt that it occurs. He should tell him everything will be okay, but he can’t.

Souji doesn’t want to say it because he doesn’t want to have to hear anyone tell him that it won’t be.

 

**iii. awareness**

It’s the closest they’ve come to warm water since Yukiko’s inn, but Souji doesn’t really agree with Chie’s depiction of the temperature. The taps run black, with thick, ink-like gunk spurting haphazardly and spluttering all over the sink for a good few minutes before actually running water, and even then Souji doesn’t entirely trust it as clean and it’s barely more than lukewarm. He leans his katana against the basin and rests his and Nanako’s packs against the door; that way, if anything comes in, he’ll be alerted immediately and can grab his weapon. The original lock on the door rusted shut long ago, so he makes do.

Nanako scrunches up her eyes as Souji wets his sleeve and uses it to wipe her face. Her nose is red from his scrubbing but she doesn’t complain. She frowns and chews on her lips and clearly finds the temperature of the water as unpleasant as Souji does, but she lets him clean her up anyway. She offers to do the same for him, and he smiles and nods. He closes his eyes and feels the cotton of her jumper run along his cheeks, his eyes, the bump in his nose. Souji doesn’t like his nose. He thinks it’s too big.

Things like appearance don’t really matter anymore though. Not really.

Nanako’s washing clumps of dirt and God only knows what else from her hair when they hear it. The sudden smash of a window breaking. Souji’s read enough throughout his life to know that this should be the moment his heart stops in fear, but actually it does anything but. There’s a sudden throb from his chest, which jolts his whole body forwards in a shiver. As his hands close around the hilt of his katana, he feels blood bursting in his ears, and his head pulses with adrenaline. He steadies his breathing, dizzy with fear and anticipation, and crouches towards the door, signalling Nanako to stay quiet. He hears the tap hastily turn off with a squeak, and Nanako’s sharp inhale of breath, presumably at water running down her back from her dripping wet hair, but she’s soon at his side and tied it back into a ponytail again.

There was a time where she would have worn bunches. Souji remembers how much pride she would take in tying two even bows every morning before school, and he remembers seeing one of those ribbons snag against branches that ripped and tore at their clothes and faces, and left behind as he grabbed Nanako and pulled her with him out of a potential fight. He blinks the memory away, and the ebbing tide rushing through his brain returns.

Nanako whispers, “How far away are we, big bro? From everyone else?”

Souji thinks. Nanako’s little hands scrabble at their packs and roll them away from the door as fast as she can. The classroom they’ve made their base of operations is at one end of the corridor; it’s the furthest away from any large windows. The bathroom is at the other end, situated beside a huge, unboarded window, and Souji assumes that’s the source of the sound they heard. The corridor isn’t too long, but it’s a bit longer than the corridor in Souji’s last high school, and he remembers even that felt like it would never end some days. “We’re not far,” Souji decides to say eventually. “If there’s trouble, they can help us. And they’re definitely safe right now.”

Stringing her bag over her shoulder, Nanako nods. They had been right to head for shelter, because the rain had very quickly become what Souji suspected was the beginnings of a typhoon. There was something desperately sad about the classroom they’d chosen to camp in; mildewed yellow drawings of the student’s favourite things fluttered against crumbling display walls, grammar posters and maths help guides peeled from the wall, and none of them had even been able to bring themselves to look at the class photograph that still rested on the teacher’s desk. They very quickly boarded the windows and setup the tents Yukiko had salvaged before her inn burnt down. The windows they did for safety, but Chie figured using their tents would keep them extra warm.

Prying the door open, Souji hopes that the smashing is due to the typhoon, but what sounds like muffled footsteps and grunting come through the crack between the door and its frame, and he instantly realises otherwise. Once the door is open wide enough to glance out of, Souji confirms his suspicion. Three figures mill about in the hallway. One is hanging out of the window, a second stands by it and the third seems to be patrolling the corridor. That one is the biggest threat, Souji decides, and he needs to take them out first.

Souji can handle three of them very simply, very quietly and very efficiently. He tells Nanako to hang back, and slowly opens the door. The dangerous one has made their way halfway down the corridor. The other two are still throwing themselves out the window. That makes sense. They love rain. They all come out and stand in it. They’re probably trying to get back outside.

With a lurch, Souji realises they all seem to be dressed in some kind of school uniform. He thinks back to the class picture none of them could bring themselves to look at, and feels sick.

He moves like electricity flows through him; fast and fluid, but with soft steps that make little noise, unlike the figure he’s aiming for, who’s steps echo throughout the building. He sweeps his sword across in an arc, aiming to severe the head from the body, when to his absolute horror the figure turns. Souji closes his eyes. He hates looking at their faces, and he especially hates looking at their faces when he kills them.

The horrible _swunk_ of his blade slicing through flesh like a butter knife doesn’t come. Souji almost thinks he’s missed until he hears the grating sound of metal on metal. His eyes fly open, and meet a cold, steely blue. His grip on his katana goes slack.

His blade has met another. The boy holding the sword, the one Souji had been about to attack, looks from his expression to his katana to Souji’s expression again, and his frown deepens. He sheathes his blade. Souji drops his.

“I-” He tries to begin, but can’t. “I-”

“We just want to get out of the rain,” the voice that cuts his off is dull, blunt and to the point. “We’re not looking for trouble.”

“We didn’t even know anyone else was here,” comes a voice from behind him, and Souji turns to see three students rather than the two from before. He realises they must have been helping another climb in through the window, and also realises the girl speaking has a bow tight in her grip and an arrow almost aimed for him. “We’ll back off if this is your territory-”

Another boy with a sword whines. “But Yuka-tan, this is the only building for-”

“We’ll back off if this is your territory,” she repeats through gritted teeth, and it feels more for the benefit of the second boy than for Souji, “but we have an injured member and we’d be grateful for the time to recover.”

Souji licks his lips nervously. Territory? He didn’t understand. Did people really claim bits of land as their own now? It wouldn’t surprise him, but he hadn’t bumped into anyone since the debacle at the Amagi Inn, and hadn’t really given much thought to what anyone else was doing, except his uncle. “Injured,” he repeats, “not infected?”

The girl looks nervously at the boy behind Souji, the one he’d almost attacked, before saying in an almost forced tone, “Injured. Not infected. None of us are infected.”

“You’re sure about that?” Souji isn’t convinced by her tone, but is too sick with himself for nearly killing a living person to argue extensively. “Because we have a child with us, a young child, and -”

“None of us are infected,” she states again.

Nodding, Souji drops down to pick up his katana. “Good to know,” he breathes, relieved. “Then you’re welcome to stay with us.”

 

**iv. application**

Yosuke is begrudging of new members joining the group, but Chie and Yukiko are ecstatic at the addition of more girls. The one with the bow introduces herself as Takeba Yukari, and leaning against her is their injured member, a girl named Yamagishi Fuuka. The boy Souji tried to kill is called Minato, and he hangs back from the rest of them, lurking awkwardly in the classroom’s doorway. Their final party member, Iori Junpei, seems to decide he and Yosuke are kindred spirits, and forces him into conversation despite his clear lack of interest.

Souji tries to help the girls with their injuries and also size up the group at the same time. Their school uniform seems to consist of a blazer and trousers, but the girls have skirts. It’s not a uniform Souji recognises, but looks like it belonged somewhere pretty prestigious. He imagines it used to have a tie, and Yukari seems to have a red ribbon wrapped around her bow which Souji assumes might have been what that tie looked like.

He tells them about the running water and watches their faces light up. It’s clear that they’ve been away from that for even longer than Souji’s group have.

“Oh man,” Junpei laughs. “Oh man, and it’s warm? This is great!”

“I wouldn’t exactly say warm,” Souji mumbles, but Yukiko shushes him.

“Oh, hush, it’s warm,” she promises, before turning her attention back to Fuuka. “Are you meant to apply  pressure to a fracture, or just leave it?”

Yukari murmurs, “Are we sure it’s a fracture? What if it’s broken?”

There’s a tug on Souji’s sleeve. “Big bro? I’m tired.”

The excitement of meeting new people is no doubt exhausting to Nanako. Souji nods. “You don’t have to stay up,” he promises. “Chie and Yukiko have first watch tonight. You can go to bed if you want to.”

She nods, and hugs him tightly before disappearing into a tent. Souji watches her go, and looks up just in time to see that Minato’s eyes followed her as well. He still holds his sword in one hand, and the free one becomes a tight fist.

“How old is she?” Yukari asks. “Your sister?”

“She’s my cousin, actually,” Souji states, pulling his eyes away from the boy with the shaggy blue hair and focusing it on the conversation actually occurring. “She’s eight now. I think.”

Yukari smiles. Her lips are small and her face is round. It’s the kind of face that’s suited to smiling, Souji thinks, and instantly feels a sting at the fact it doesn’t get to anymore.

“Must be hard,” she says. “We had a kid with us too, at first. He was eleven. But we-”

“Don’t.” It’s the second time that night Souji has heard Minato speak, and something about his voice makes him feel terribly lonely. His tone, pitch, speed; it all makes Souji feel so isolated. Like he’s the only person in the world. He wonders if Minato’s voice has always sounded like this, or if it’s just a reflection of how the boy feels now. “Don’t talk about that.”

Souji didn’t really want to hear it anyway; he can guess what happened from the fact the aforementioned child is no longer with the group. Yukari’s smile is sadder this time. “Another time then,” she tells Souji softly. Souji’s not sure he’ll ever be ready for something like that. “He doesn’t look it,” Yukari continues, “but Minato’s really good with kids. Really protective of them too. He’d save every kid in the world if he had the power to.” She pauses, considering what to say. Souji thinks of telling her that he thinks most people would do , but she carries on. “You’d never tell though, by looking at him. Or by talking to him sometimes. But he would. He will.”

 

**v. resourcefulness**

Souji sees Minato’s affinity with his own eyes in how quickly Nanako takes to him. While they wait out the storm she plays with his hair and tells him stories and jokes which Souji swears are the only thing that make the boy smile. He doesn’t understand how Nanako feels so comfortable with Minato so quickly, but some part of him is very grateful for it. Minato seems to bring some trace of normality back to Nanako’s daily life. Nothing could make Souji happier than that.

The third night of the typhoon is the coldest yet. Souji is cooking dinner, and Fuuka is doing her best to help, but not really managing anything productive. He hears Nanako complain about being cold behind him. Minato offers her his jacket, and the next sound is that of Yukari crying for Minato to wait, and Yosuke drawing his kunai, yelling at him to get away from the girl.

Souji turns to see Yukiko grabbing Nanako by the hand and pulling her away. She grips her tightly, clinging to Nanako like she’s holding on for dear life, and Souji wonders what on Earth his missed.

Yosuke faces Yukari, but keeps his weapons pointed at Minato. Chie grabs Junpei so he can’t reach for a weapon, and Yukari’s hand hovers nervously over the bow over her shoulders. “I thought you said none of you were infected,” Yosuke spits at her, and Yukari grimaces.

“None of us _are_ infected,” she replies, but Yosuke just shakes his kunai menacingly in Minato’s direction.

“Then what the _Hell_ am I looking at here?” He yells. “Because it’s sure not what an uninfected arm looks like!”

Souji glances downwards. Minato’s gaze is locked on the floor. The shirt he is wearing is short sleeved, and, without his blazer, his arms are completely exposed. Both are littered with scars, but the left arm boasts one unlike anything else. A jagged crack that runs from just below his elbow to just above his wrist. The skin around and inside it is a dark, crumbling red brown, that looks like rotting wood. It’s like Minato’s arm is made from oak, and someone’s taken one hack with an axe before giving up. The skin inside the split is crumbling and rotten too, like a plank suffering from damp. Souji’s seen it before. They’ve all seen it before. Souji has to admit, he’s never seen it quite like this; it’s too long, and the infected skin is too dark. It’s wrong in a different way to a normal bite.

He reaches for the gun at his back.

Fuuka, who is usually soft-spoken and nervous, cries out, “Ask him how old it is!”

“I don’t want to hear how long the guy’s got left!” Yosuke snarls. “I want to know what you idiots thought was okay about lying to us!”

“Hanamura,” she begs. “Please.”

“Alright,” his voice drops, quieter, gentler. “How old?”

Minato shrugs. “About five months maybe.”

“Bullshit!”

“Give or take a month,” Minato’s tone is so casual Souji can hardly believe the boy’s life is in danger, and yet Yosuke’s weapons are so firmly trained on him he can’t understand how Minato isn’t phased. “It’s hard to tell without constant access to calendars.”

Yosuke moves his kunai closer. “No. Apathy Syndrome takes everyone within a week.”

“Evidently, it only takes almost everyone,” Yukari’s hands are by her side. She clearly doesn’t feel threatened enough to shoot anymore.

“I don’t believe this.” Yosuke shakes his head. “I don’t... All this time they wasted looking for a cure and it was, what, sealed inside your DNA? Nope. Not falling for it.”

“It’s true,” Fuuka rises, nervously and unsteadily to her feet. “We’re heading to the Kirijo Labs at Yakushima. They built them on an island so that genetically engineered diseases couldn’t get out, but, luckily that means they didn’t let Apathy Syndrome in.”

Yosuke pulls back, but it’s clear he’s still unconvinced. Souji assumes that, like he, Yukiko and Chie are too shocked by any of this to comment, but he notices Chie does let go of Junpei.

“We think the Kirijo Group will have the resources to find out why Minato is immune, the resources to build a vaccine, to end all this,” Yukari states. “We understand if you don’t believe us. You wouldn’t be the first.”

“‘S’why we didn’t tell you,” Junpei says, straightening out his shirt. “And we never woulda had too if Mr. Smarty Pants over there didn’t go offering people his clothes.”

Minato shrugs again. “I forgot they didn’t know.”

Junpei’s mouth hangs open for a split second. “It was your idea not to tell anyone!”

Minato returns to looking solemnly at the floor in silence, and Yukari takes over from Junpei, claiming, “What Junpei-kun means is, we would have been on our way as soon as the weather improved. You wouldn’t ever seen us again, wouldn’t ever need to know.”

“Actually,” Souji’s voice cracks when he opens his mouth to speak, and he’s not sure why. His throat feels dry and his brain is numb to everything around him, but he keeps talking anyway. “We’re headed to the docks too. We’re meeting Nanako-chan’s father there. We promised.”

Yukari’s eyes brighten, and it’s clear she knows that if Souji can still believe his uncle will be there to meet him after a year of this hell, then he’ll still believe in a cure, in a vaccine, in a future. And he does. Souji still believes. Souji is desperate for someone to tell him everything will be okay, and to make it all okay, and if it’s this group of disgruntled, filthy school children who haven’t changed their clothes in over twelve months who are going to make things right, then Souji’s going to believe in them.

He sees so much of his own group in them. He thinks that’s why he can’t bring himself to believe Minato’s lying. He knows Nanako would trust them too, and Nanako’s trust matters more to him than anything.

“Then we can head for the docks together,” comes Yukiko’s voice. She’s petting Nanako’s head and smiling softly. “If you really think that you can put a stop to this, I want to be as much help as I can.”

Yosuke’s scowling about how stupid everyone is for falling into a stupid trap, but Yukari beams and thanks them, and Fuuka sits down and returns to stirring the stew they’re cooking. Everything slowly returns to normal after that, and Yosuke finally sheathes his kunai.

Souji can’t help but notice, however, that Minato continues to sit away from everyone, staring solidly at the floor. A free hand plays with something yellow he’s stored in his bag, and that steel gaze doesn’t move towards any of the group all night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> may have bitten off more than i can chew by being ridiculously over ambitious with this... aaaaa...  
> anyway this is like 3 hrs late in my timezone but hopefully not everywhere else. ive always wanted to write a zombie apocalypse au, esp after reading "last fall" which has been one of my fave fics ever for so so long so like, when people on twitter recommended i do an au for protagshipping week that was what popped into my mind
> 
> usually i write better than this i swear im just so frazzled rn from the sheer amount going on. lets hope tomorrow is better. also koromaru was originally meant to be one of the gekkoukan group like he's in my plans and everything but it didn't really end up going the way i planned it and i couldnt really work out how to tie him in
> 
> anyway thanks for reading & if u want to hang out and talk about protagshipping u can find me as megidolaon on tumblr and runicshield on twitter !! bye lads


	2. XVIII. THE MOON

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this entire chapter is just exposition and i'm so sorry

Gongoozler (noun) – an idle spectator, one who stares idly at something for a long time

 

**i. cycles**

Crisp, burnt leaves come down in a cascade of crunching, and musty damp scent works it’s way into Minato’s bones. The cold weather seems to be affecting everyone - not just their group, but the infected as well. His bite is chaffed, and cracks when he moves his arm too much or too fast, and sends a stream of pure fire down from his elbow to the tips of his fingers when he clenches or unclenches his fist; he does that a lot, actually. It’s a coping thing. Or at least, he was always told it was. 

He doesn’t know how he feels about the expansion of their group. It makes him nervous. More backs to watch. More names to call. More bodies to burn. 

Nanako is the worst of all. She’s sitting with arms around Souji’s neck, and he’s carrying her in a piggyback, and her eyes are round with wonder. Every now and again, she glances back to Minato, and beams. Minato can’t meet that gaze. He can’t swallow the guilt that clogs his throat. Hands crawl up his gullet and try to force themselves out of his mouth, try to tear his jaw open, try to rip him apart from the inside out. But somehow that pain, that searing laceration from his lips downwards, doesn’t compare to Nanako’s disappointment when he tries to ignore her. 

How the fuck did he end up in this position? 

Her hands are like porcelain, a doll’s, fragile and soft, and she leans back, dropping her grip on Souji’s shoulder with one of them, and grabs a stray leaf as it glides downwards. When she catches it, she flails it in Souji’s face, letting out a burst of proud laughter. Souji laughs too. Yosuke and Chie turn from the front of the group, and Chie smiles softly before turning back around and charging forward. Nanako leans back again. She shows Minato the leaf she caught, smiling bashfully now, and Minato tries to sculpt his mouth upwards into some expression of his joy or pride. His lips tremble with the pressure, and the effort makes him feel sick and dizzy, but Nanako looks satisfied. She whispers into Souji’s ear, and the taller boy drops back, matching Minato’s pace. 

She hands the leaf to Minato. “They’re my favourite thing about autumn,” she states firmly. “Except for how it makes the bad people go to sleep.” She glances at Minato’s left arm, maybe subconsciously, as she says it. Minato pulls it back, and wonders if she thinks he’s one of them. One of the bad people. 

The word “zombie” has never been used by the media to explain what’s going on, but everyone thinks it. The official name for the infected - Shadows - is barely used. Minato always thought it was stupid anyway. Minako used to say- 

He doesn’t realise he’s clenching his fists until a blaze of prickling warmth sends his arm into a series of shivers. A small gasp slips out, but he tries to keep his pain as unnoticeable as possible. He’s used to that.

Nanako asks, “Do you like it?”

“The leaf?” Minato checks. Nanako nods, and he turns his eyes down to it. He looks at its curling edges and crisping corners. It feels like charcoal; smooth yet burnt. He worries it will disintegrate in his hands, but it’s stronger than that. Somehow, it’s stronger than that. He doesn’t know what kind of tree it’s from. The longer he stares at it, the longer he spends trying to think of a name for it, the more he convinces himself he can hear a voice, a voice so much like his but softer, higher, passionate. The more he thinks he can feel hands around his. “Yeah,” he chokes out. “It’s lovely.”

“Do you like autumn?” Nanako’s voice is sweet, gentle, real. Minato tries to focus on it; focus on what’s real. He takes a deep breath, and nods. Nanako giggles. “Autumn is Souji’s favourite, isn’t it big bro?” 

Souji shrugs, and the gesture jiggles Nanako around a little, which leaves her laughing even more. “I like wearing cardigans,” he offers by way explanation. “Autumn weather’s perfect for that.”

“Which one’s your favourite?” Nanako asks. “Out of all the seasons?” 

Minato chews his lip. “Spring,” he says finally. Spring always felt wrong to Minato, with plants blooming and animals coming out of hibernation. It used to feel like some tedious reminder of the repetitious, circular nature of life, like somehow everything growing was a sign or a reminder of the inevitability of death. He could never put the way spring makes him feel into words, but seeing everything blossom as winter came to an end felt like a mockery of the harsh months it had just struggled through. Seeing it all come back to life feels fake, because next winter it will all die again. 

But his sister always loved spring. It feels right that he should too.

 

**ii. emotion**

Minato doesn’t know when he begins noticing it, but slowly, he starts admiring Souji’s fighting stance. It’s fluid, quick, elegant. He holds blades with an almost trained finesse, like he’s been training all his life. He takes the position of leader with a collected grace that Minato could never manage when the position was thrust upon him. He makes sharp decisions, hard decisions, and he makes them quickly. Minato wonders how he would handle decisions like his, like the kind his group have had to make. 

Junpei’s the one who brings it up. Tactlessly, bluntly, obliviously, in true Junpei style. The nine of them are travelling together, are surviving together, but they know nothing about each other, know nothing about anything, so one particularly cold afternoon as they set up tents and prepare for a bitter night, he says, “Were there always this many of you?” 

“Uh,” Souji stretches up and pegs the material to a particularly high branch. Minato doesn’t know anything about tents, or camping, or being a useful party member, so he’s arranging sticks and twigs into the right position for tonight’s fire, and Nanako’s helping. She’s wearing his blazer again; he couldn’t bear to see her shivering. He doesn’t mind the cold, but he can feel Yosuke’s eyes on his arm, on his bite, and he doesn’t like that. Minato gets the feeling Yosuke doesn’t like him. He’s not sure why, because he’s convincing himself that he’s not bothered by the fact the other boy tried to kill him. He’s not. 

It’s Yukiko who answers. “Actually, no. Chie and I joined them much later. My family ran an inn, up in the mountains. We made do there for a long time. It was safe. Souji-kun and Yosuke-kun came to stay with us. But there was a fire... It was an accident, we think. We were the only ones who made it out.” 

Minato knew this conversation would lead this way. He knows eventually it will lead to those they’ve lost. He doesn’t want it to. He can’t let it come to that. 

Souji clears his throat. “At first, it was me, Nanako, my uncle and his co-worker. My uncle’s a detective. He sort of knew about things in advance.”

“We went to Junes!” Nanako cheers. “I love Junes!” 

“We were gathering supplies,” Souji chuckles. “But things got bad a lot quicker than we thought. We stayed there for a while. Nanako’s father got called back in. Everything went downhill after that. We made plans to meet, and camped out in Junes for a while with a couple of part-timers.” 

Yosuke scoffs. “And I’m the only one of them who’s still alive. A huge group of us. Gone. Just like that.” He kicks the ground bitterly. 

Junpei says he’s sorry for asking. He doesn’t mention there were ten or so of them originally. He doesn’t mention how slowly they all died. Minato looks at the sticks piled up, at Nanako’s small fingers delicately propping them against each other, and tries to calm down, tries to even his breathing. 

He will never be able to find the words to say how grateful he is for Junpei’s silence, and the glance Junpei gives to Minato’s bag lets him know the boy was thinking of him. Minato offers the closest thing he can to a smile. His eyes flick towards Souji, and finds himself watching him construct their tent. He handles it with the same grace, the same fluidity, he does fighting. 

Minato wonders if all Souji’s movements are careful, considered, coordinated. He doesn’t know what part of him compels him to keep looking, but he does.  

 

**iii. reflection**

“We were there, you know,” Fuuka holds her knees against her chest. They’re huddled around a fire that Junpei couldn’t get to grow large enough for all of them, so Minato is kind of awkwardly pressed against Souji’s shoulder on one side, and his leg against Chie’s thighs on the other, and he can’t decide which sensation is making him most uncomfortable. “Ground 0. That was us.” 

Yosuke snorts. “Yeah right. I followed this on the news. Ground 0 was torched.” 

“That’s why we got out,” Yukari sneers. “That’s why we’re here now in dirty school uniforms and nothing out.” 

“Barely made it in the nick of time,” Junpei flicks his hat up. “But we had a leader who sensed something like this was coming, and a friend with some shady contacts who grabbed us some weapons, and we ran.”

They’d never done anything as terrifying as trying to break quarantine, Minato thinks. He doesn’t speak. He places his hands on his lap and stares at them squarely. He hears Yukiko and Chie talk about what they were doing at the start of the outbreak, but doesn’t really feel like he’s there, like he’s real, like he’s listening. He trembles lightly, the cold dragging down his bite, and it’s like he’s being sliced open by a blade of pure ice. He wonders if this is how it feels to be infected all the time. He wonders if the reason they like the rain and the fog so much is because it’s the only thing that stops the pain. 

Something pushes down on his shoulder, and he jumps, but it’s just Souji’s hand. Nanako is resting in his lap, using Minato’s blazer as a blanket. Souji whispers, “If you’re cold, I can get your jacket back for you. Or you could use the scarf you keep in your bag.” There’s no way Souji doesn’t feel Minato tense under his hand, but he keeps talking. “I know you keep one in there, but you never use it. It might come in handy soon.” 

The conversation he doesn’t want to hear from Fuuka suddenly seems a lot more interesting than the conversation he doesn’t want to have with Souji. 

“So like,” Chie plays with the sleeves of her hoodie as she speaks. “Was your friend in a gang or... ?” 

“No, no,” Junpei’s laughing. “Could you imagine Ryoji-kun in a gang? With his high trousers and his... little suspenders and fancy shirt?” 

Yukari’s laughing too, but Minato just balls the material of his trousers in his hands. The sting that it sends through his arm feels oddly fitting. 

Fuuka isn’t laughing either. “How much do you all know?” Her voice is soft, cautious. “About how it all started.” 

“Well,” Nanako breathes deeply in her sleep, and Souji runs a hand through her hair, “past the snippets I got from Dojima-san, nothing really.” 

“Yeah, and we don’t need to know,” Yosuke’s voice is constantly so scornful. Minato can’t stand listening to it. “How things got like this doesn’t matter. We just have to deal with it.” 

“I’d like to know,” Yukiko states, and Souji agrees. He thinks it will make it easier, knowing where it came from. Minato disagrees. He’s been there since the start and that hasn’t made anything easier. He doesn’t want to hear Fuuka’s story. He lived it. He knows everything. And yet he finds himself listening to the gentle tone of her voice and slumping slightly against Souji as she speaks. 

 

**iv. emergence**

No one could have known, Fuuka promises. At first, no one could have any way of knowing. The origins of Apathy Syndrome came from the pride and joy of Gekkoukan Private High School. Fuuka loved them. Fuuka adored them. 

Gekkoukan was founded by the Kirijo Group, she explains, and it functioned on some levels like a university. There were privately owned labs, labs where the finest scientist in the country would be thrilled to work, labs at the forefront of knowledge and discovery. Yukari’s father worked there, a fact the brunette takes no delay in derailing Fuuka’s speech to point out with pride. The labs had huge glass windows that the students could look in as they passed, and their most popular project was also their most beautiful. Minato had always been kind of freaked out by it, so he avoided it, but the appeal of the experiment, which had created a series of bright blue butterflies, was widely spread. 

Fuuka would watch them for as long as she could. She’d take longer routes to her classes just to pass the labs. She loved them. She’d watch them delicately flutter and press herself against the glass and just admire them. She could never work out why they meant so much to her. She thinks it’s because she had always been so alone, but the butterflies always seemed so together. She remembers reading theories that they could even communicate telepathically, through some sort of hive mind or morphic resonance. Fuuka was always alone. She wanted that connection more than anything. So she’d gaze at them for hours, and admire a beauty she would never have, and relationships she’d never forge, and she feels now like she could have stopped it, like she should have known, should have realised after all that time that these things were dangerous. But she didn’t. No one did.

The butterflies were deemed docile. Junpei laughs bitterly as Fuuka recounts how safe they were viewed. If they got out, they were just allowed to float around the school. It wasn’t a big deal. Students accepted it. 

Minato remembers one that used to favour his classroom, and scowls. Butterflies really unnerved him. They always had. 

They were fine, at first. Fuuka makes it clear no one is sure what happened to them, what forced them into this position, but she thinks one of them bit a student, and then whatever resonance allowed them to communicate relayed the information that biting humans was good, and the scientists started to notice a fall in the number of butterflies they had bred. 

Yukari shakes her head. She takes over, explaining that the scientists had no idea the butterflies would become violent, had no reason to suspect that they were attacking them. But they were. They would latch onto the back of the scientists necks. All they wanted was to drink blood, like mosquitoes, but their tongues or something had some kind of chemical that cut off access to certain glands and parts of the brain and that’s how the syndrome began. Their numbers were dropping because the scientists were walking around with them attached to their backs, and then the scientists lost motivation to work, lost the will to do anything, and  eventually lost what made them human. A lot of them attacked their families, Yukari says, tearing up. By the time they worked out the butterflies were to blame, the bodies had already begun piling up. 

Minato remembers the day the labs were closed down, but at the same time he doesn’t. It comes to him half in flashes. Explosions. Government officials. Officers in riot uniforms. He thinks they were ordered to stay in their classes while they searched for and exterminated butterflies. He remembers bearing his neck for examination, remembers Ryoji’s scarf being forcefully removed and Yukari’s choker being torn off to make sure they weren’t hiding anything, remembers students crying, thinks someone was dragged out of their classroom screaming. And at the same time, he doesn’t remember any of it. 

He should take over for the next part of the story, but he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to relive any of it, wants to leave it dead, leave it buried. Doesn’t want to bring anything back because it won’t change where they are now. He’s contemplating how much that makes him sound like Yosuke when Yosuke interrupts to say, “Serves them right.” 

Chie is enthralled. The story seems to have captured her in a way it didn’t anyone else. “So, they got all the butterflies? But Apathy Syndrome still got out?” 

“Well, by the time they’d exterminated them all, they’d already infected quite a few people,” Yukari shifts her weight and crosses her legs the other way round. “The butterflies might be the origins of Apathy Syndrome, but barely any of the spread of the infection was down to them.” 

“It’s passed through bodily fluids,” Fuuka states. 

“Yeah. Bites. We already knew that,” Yosuke snaps. Minato can’t help but feel the hostility is aimed at him. 

Fuuka shrinks back, shy, nervous. “They think... They thought blood and kissing and... those things, as well, at first, helped to spread it, but-” 

“Okay, okay, but what happened next,” Chie interrupts. “You guys get out eventually, right?” 

Under his breath, Yosuke mutters, “Probably bring the whole damn disease with you too.” 

“The syndrome was already out,” Yukari growls. “We were locked in quarantine forever, which basically consisted of us being stuck in our dorms with no way of getting out or contacting the outside world.”

“Arisato-san... That is to say, our leader, she would say every day that it was just a matter of time before they destroyed the city,” Fuuka’s voice is laden with admiration and nostalgia, and a bitter sadness that Minato understands better than any. He loses interest in the conversation again. 

“She sounded like a conspiracy theorist half the time,” Junpei laughs, rolling his eyes, “always saying they would do it just to calm down the rest of the world, to make it seem like they had some control over the problem.”

Minato hates this, hates talking about the quarantine and the bombing and how everyone he knows is dead and gone now, how everything was destroyed, how they couldn’t save or help anyone. He feels sick just thinking about it. His stomach churns uncomfortably, and he glares at the orange glow of their fire, focusing on the crackling of burning wood than the voices of the few friends he has left. 

He can’t listen to them, can’t be in that place again, won’t be in that place again, and so he shoves all thoughts of butterflies and bombs away, and hopes the fire will help his anxious, frayed nerves settle themselves.

 

**v. confusion**

In a blink, everyone is gone. Minato can’t work out where. They were all sat together just a moment ago, and now... Now he looks around and there’s no one to his left. His eyes flick upwards. Souji is still beside him, but his katana rests across his lap now instead of Nanako. The fire is burning low, but there’s something strung across Minato’s shoulders that’s keeping the chill out. 

He’s never looked at Souji from this angle before. His neck is long, Minato notes, long and slender and the skin is smooth and flat. Can skin be flat? Can necks be flat? Minato’s mind is hazy. He thinks of asking Souji whether the fact he’s flat is a complement. 

Souji’s face is angular where Minato’s is round, but it’s angular in a gentle, elegant way. He likes Souji’s nose the most. It sits perfectly above his soft, sloping mouth, and following it up to his eyes makes Minato’s heart skip a beat. For some reason. Probably because his eyes seem so old, so wise, so knowing. Minato feels like he could find forever in Seta Souji’s eyes. 

Minato rubs at his own burning eyes, tired, and yawns. Souji turns downwards, and smiles. 

“Evening,” he says, and his voice is somehow simultaneously everything and nothing. It’s empty and full, expressive but emotionless. Minato doesn’t know why it sounds so right to him, when it’s so riddled with juxtaposition. “You and I got first watch tonight. You fell asleep and no one really wanted to wake you.” 

He fell asleep. Of course he did. Of course. He mumbles an apology, which Souji instantly dismisses, and scrambles around for his sword. 

“I hope I didn’t like, drool on you or anything,” Minato speaks slowly, trying to gather himself. 

Souji chuckles. “Like I’d be able to tell it apart from Nanako’s drool anyway,” he replies, which Minato takes as a yes, he did drool. Everywhere. 

He looks away from Souji, out into the distance, keeping his eyes peeled and his ears open. He tries to work out why he feels so safe in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere with a boy he’s barely just met, but the answer doesn’t come to him. 


	3. XV. THE DEVIL

Mellifluous (adj.) – a sound that is sweet and smooth, pleasing to hear

 

**i. ego**

Souji has known, trusted and loved Hanamura Yosuke for a very long time. Now, he barely recognises him. He is sullen, reclusive, hostile and cruel. He isn’t the boy Souji made jokes with, isn’t the boy who would sleep in class and leave his homework to the last minute. He’s not the boy Souji would attempt to tutor during his breaks from working at Junes, not the boy who would play ridiculously loud music out of his headphones while on the bus, not the boy Souji would help chase Teddie round the soup aisle. But Souji supposes Teddie is gone now. 

It feels like Hanamura Yosuke is too. 

There’s this strange urge to protect and care for people that Souji has carried with him his whole life. He thinks it could come from the fact no one ever really cared much for him. Souji gets nervous about being the leader, and almost wishes when the others had joined one of them had stepped up to take the position, but he can’t imagine a place he would rather be. The pressure, the uncertainty, the nerves; they all build up and get to him, but somehow, they feel right. He’s meant to help as many as he can, and in this role, he does. He will. 

He’s not sure he can protect Yosuke anymore. He’s not sure Yosuke even wants protecting. He throws himself into battles with reckless abandon, he barely eats, barely sleeps, barely talks to the rest of the group. When he is with others he is snappy, harsh, sharp-tongued and snippy. 

Minato gets it worst. Souji doesn’t know if it’s because Minato doesn’t react, or because Yosuke has taken a real, genuine dislike to the other boy. He hopes it isn’t the latter. He doesn’t want to imagine his Yosuke hating someone like that. 

Souji tries not to idolise Minato too much. It’s clear the boy isn’t looking to be put on a pedestal, but Souji can’t stop thinking about how he’s... different. How he hasn’t changed. How he won’t change. How he might save them all. It’s hard to talk to someone like that. He knows it. So Souji keeps trying to shake that mindset, keeps trying to see Minato the person and not Minato the cure, but no matter how hard he tries, there’s a tinge of urgency, of need, to the way he wants to protect Minato that isn’t present with anyone else. Almost like how he wants to protect Nanako. He hopes that’s not weird. He can’t work out why he wants to keep him safe so bad. 

Yosuke sits away from them at dinner. Again. Junpei’s telling an enthralling story about a baseball game that Yukari promises never happened, Yukiko is wrapping a bandage around Chie’s arm with considerable difficulty, because she keeps pumping her fist with enthusiasm as the caper unfolds, and Nanako is laughing, happy, enjoying a chance to be a kid again. Fuuka and Minato cooked that night, some kind of soup-like sludge that doesn’t taste as bad as it looks, only in the fact it doesn’t really taste of anything at all. Minato offers a bowl to Yosuke. He hits it out of his hands, tossing it to the ground. The conversation halts as the bowl rolls to a stop. 

Breathing heavily, Yosuke growls. “I won’t accept  _ anything _ from you.” 

Minato doesn’t appear particularly phased. He drops down and picks up the bowl. “Fine,” his voice, in sharp contrast to Yosuke’s, is controlled, even. “But next time, just say so. Don’t waste food that could be better spent on someone else-”

Yosuke grabs Minato by the collar of his shirt. It only occurs to Souji then how much smaller the other boy is, how fragile and delicate and breakable he seems. Souji’s on his feet, and Yukari is too, reaching for that bow she always has on her back. Souji’s again struck by how much the Gekkoukan kids care about each other, realises how much they’ve been through together, how long they’ve known each other, how their bond can’t compare to the one he’s tried to forge with Yukiko and Chie, to the one he thought he’d forged with Yosuke. 

“I’ll tell you what would have been better spent on someone else,” Yosuke hisses. “That!” He drops Minato, and the boy stumbles back a bit, tripping and falling. Yosuke sneers down his nose, contorted into ridges and peaks and crescents from how tightly his face is screwed up, and glares at Minato’s arm - his left arm. Minato scrambles to pull it away, to hide it behind his back, to stop Yosuke from looking at it. 

“Why you?” Yosuke snarls. “Why you?! It could have been anyone - ANYONE - but it’s you! Why is it you? Why the fuck is it you?!”

Minato’s staring at the ground, palming dirt. Yosuke slams his fist into a tree. The impact shakes the branches. Nanako starts crying. The old Yosuke would take that as a sign to stop, would be jolted into accepting his actions as wrong, would stop it. This Yosuke keeps yelling. His facing the tree, looking away from Minato, from everyone. He leaves his fist against the trunk, his knuckles dusty with cuts from his initial slam. “I’ve seen better people than you die,” he chokes out. Souji’s spent enough time with him to know that Yosuke is trying to mask himself crying. “Good people. Kind people. You’re nothing. You’re no one. You aren’t special. So why you?” 

“I don’t know how full of yourself you must be to  _ presume _ you’re the only person who’s lost someone.” Yukari has a hand extended, but Minato is still on the ground. His voice is levelled. It’s always levelled. Something about that unnerves Souji. He feels like Minato should be upset too. Like that would make more sense. Like that would be right. Like it would make him seem more human, would stop him seeming so unreal, so unreachable. He extends a shaky arm up to Yukari, who pulls him up. He leans on her as he stammers, “If it could have been anyone else, believe me, I would have wanted it to be.” 

He leads Yukari away, and she shoots cold glare at Yosuke’s back. He can hear her murmuring something softly to Minato, trying to comfort him, but he doesn’t appear to be listening. 

The group breaks up, slowly. Souji stays outside with Yosuke as long as he can, but the boy ignores him. Eventually, Nanako tugs his arm and drags him to bed, and Souji can’t stay with him any longer. He says goodnight. He doesn’t get a reply. 

Souji doesn’t sleep that night, and when they’re ambushed the next morning, he can barely do more than shield Nanako. They deal with the infected very quickly; Yukari knocks arrows and takes three of them out before Junpei and Minato have even unsheathed their weapons. They fight quickly, efficiently, with the exception of Yosuke. He just flails his kunai around before bumping into Minato and sending him sprawling into the hoard. Minato disappears in the swarm of bodies, and Souji feels his heart catch in his throat. 

When they’re defeated, and Minato stands, unscathed, and promises he’s okay, it’s the sweetest noise Souji has ever heard. It’s a delicate voice, a triumphant voice, a soft and smooth voice, and it punches his heart downwards into his stomach in a way few things ever could. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and laughs with relief. 

Yosuke is even more distant from the group that day. Souji overhears Yukari tell Fuuka she thinks Minato was pushed into the fray on purpose. 

Souji thinks of all the people he’s seen die. He wonders how he missed Hanamura Yosuke’s death.

 

**ii. error**

“You’ve got to be shitting me.” 

Yukari shakes her head, and a peal of giddy laughter escapes Yosuke. Souji feels sick hearing it. It’s wrong. 

“A trial. You’re putting me on trial.” Yosuke shakes his head. “Did Arisato put you up to this? I bet he did. Where is he? Where’s the son of a-”

“He’s taken Nanako to collect firewood for tonight,” Souji states bluntly. He’s sat in a circle, with the group. Yosuke is just outside of it, being beckoned in. It seems ridiculous, but something that is becoming incredibly clear about the Gekkoukan group is that once they get an idea into their heads, they follow it through to the end. “We didn’t want either of them knowing about this.” 

Yosuke sighs. “Not you. Souji,  _ please  _ don’t tell me they’ve got their little claws into you, that  _ he’s _ got you wrapped around his crooked, infected fingers.” 

“We all have problems with how you’ve been acting lately, Yosuke-kun,” Yukiko says, nervously. Chie laces their fingers together, and rubs the back of her hand supportively. “If you’re becoming a danger to the group, then that concerns us all.” 

“A- A danger?” Yosuke’s mouth hangs open incredulously. “You think  _ I’m _ a danger to the group? What about fucking Bitten McApathy Syndrome over there? He’s fine but I’m not?” 

“He’s never tried to kill someone, Yosuke.” Souji can’t bring himself to face him. 

Yosuke’s laughing again, and he sinks to his knees, so he’s crouching at the same level as everyone else. “Is this about the other day? Because I already explained that was an accident. I was not trying to launch him into a hoard. If I wanted him dead, that would be a pretty shitty way of going about it, since he’s like, fucking immune or something.”  

Souji can’t. Souji can’t deal with this. He excuses himself while Yukari launches into a full interrogation, and follows the trail of broken sticks and trampled leaves and Nanako left. He can’t sit there and listen to someone who isn’t Yosuke talk with Yosuke’s  voice, and look at him roll Yosuke’s eyes to face him when the person gazing at him is definitely not Yosuke. He can’t do it. He can’t.

He runs his eyes over the landscapes. Winter is on the way, and he can feel it as well as see it. He hopes they can find a building for shelter; he doesn’t like to think of Nanako sleeping in the cold. 

His cousin’s laughter reaches him before he sees her. She’s telling Minato about the size of the fire they’re going to build tonight, and the things they’re going to cook, and then she stops, because she can hear birds and she loves them and she loves music, and she’s clapping and offers to sing to Minato, who agrees in a tone that Souji has never heard before, but that turns his stomach acid to ice, and sets his heart on fire so the ice melts in a bubbly sensation, like floating on air. 

Nanako sings him the Junes theme. Of course she sings the Junes theme. Souji pushes a few branches apart to reach them, and sings it back to her. 

“Big bro!” She beams, before running to hug him. “You’re here too!”

“Well, I could hardly miss a concert from my favourite singer in the world,” he chuckles. He notices Minato is hiding his face. Souji realises with a jolt it’s because he’s smiling. Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God. Why are his palms sweating? Souji can’t get his thoughts straight, and his eyes skitter around, frantic, trying to look anywhere but at the other boy. 

“We were listening to birdsong,” Minato says eventually, his voice still, monotone. 

“I know,” Souji admits. He sighs, softly. Minato pushes himself off of the ground, and hands Nanako the sticks he’d picked up. She holds them, puffing her cheeks out with pride. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Souji looks up. 

Minato smacks his hands together, clearing them of dirt. “I hate it,” he says, bluntly. Nanako walks a little further away, still in view, grabbing more sticks. Souji turns to Minato, eyes wide with surprise. He listens to the tweets; they’re a repetitive trill, but comforting. Not too high, not too low. They feel safe. Real. Comforting. “I hate that the birds get to go on singing like that, like nothing has changed. Our lives have been destroyed, but they sound the same as they did when I was fourteen. When I was ten. When I was six. I hate it.” 

Souji opens his mouth, but Minato carries on speaking. “If you’re going to try and talk to me about the stuff with Hanamura; don’t. It doesn’t bother me. Mainly because he’s right.” 

“Er-” Souji stutters. “He’s right?” 

Minato fixes his gaze on Nanako. “It shouldn’t have been me. I hate that it was. My sister-” He takes a deep, rattling breath. “I was so sure it would be my sister.”

“I... Your sister?” Souji asks. He doesn’t want to overstep, doesn’t want to push Minato out of his comfort zone. He looks from the boy to Nanako, and swallows.

Nodding slowly, Minato rubs his hand up and down his arm, his left arm. “She was our first leader, our real leader,” he explains. Souji walks nervously, cautiously, closer. “It was huge; this gash all along her stomach. She didn’t tell anyone, didn’t let it get her down. It was near enough the beginning of the outbreak that people still thought a cure was coming.”

Souji’s hand absently reaches out for Minato’s. Their fingers brush against each other. Minato shakes his head. 

“She lasted two weeks,” their fingers entwine. Minato doesn’t pull away. “She lasted two weeks, and then she died alone. Told me she didn’t want anyone else to see her like that. Especially Yamagishi.” He inhales sharply. “That extra week... I was sure it was her. I was sure she’d save us all. She always had a sort of messiah complex,” he lets out a half laugh. “It should have been her. It should have been. It should have been.” 

Nanako waves at them from the distance, and Souji waves back. He couldn’t imagine losing her. He can’t imagine what Minato’s thinking. 

“I don’t think so,” he says finally. Minato scoffs. “But thank you for telling me. About your sister. For trusting me enough to talk about that.” 

Minato is silent for a moment. “You trust me with Nanako,” he almost whispers. “And we have to trust each other with our lives until we reach the sea. So there’s no point in acting like it’s some huge secret.” 

They fall into silence again, but their hands don’t fall apart.

 

**iii. illusion**

Yosuke is hiding something. That much is clear. Souji knows him well enough, even if he’s growing into someone Souji doesn’t recognise, to see that there’s something he won’t tell. 

He’d ask what, but he can’t. He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to. He isn’t sure if they’re even friends anymore. He feels like they’re just pretending they care about each other, just giving in to the fantasy in order to retain some form of normality, to keep things the way they were before. 

He wonders if they’re doing that for Nanako, or for each other. He doesn’t understand why.

He can’t tell when Minato’s voice made his heart race in the way Yosuke’s used to, or when Yosuke’s voice made him grit his teeth and shrink in on himself. He isn’t sure about anything anymore. 

Souji wants to help. Souji needs to help. He can’t do anything other than it. But he doesn’t know how to help, or who to help, or where to start.

He just wants everyone to stop pretending. He just wants to know what’s real and what isn’t. He just wants everything to be okay. He wants to make it all okay.

He thinks maybe he’s so attached to Minato because he has the power to make everything okay. Souji can only wish for that kind of certainty, for that ability to fix things. But there he goes again, thinking of Minato as the cure rather than as a person. What’s wrong with him? Why does he do things like this? Why can’t he... Why can’t he be good enough? 

Nanako asks him to braid her hair before bed. Souji forces himself to smile, to act like he’s happy, and pats his lap. The two of them can almost imagine things are like before, like when they lived in Inaba, if they try hard enough. 

Souji is always trying his best to pretend though. He’s lived through a year of this hell, but in the back of his mind, he’s always going back home, back to Dojima’s, and he has a stack of papers on his desk he needs to fold, and he’s going to call one of the students he tutors while he does and have them practice their english, and Nanako is going to call him to dinner and Ai is going to text him about practice and it’s all normal and everyone is safe. It’s normal and okay and safe. It’s normal. It’s okay. It’s safe.

 

**iv. addiction**

“How did it happen?” Souji kicks his legs out. “Your bite, I mean.” 

Minato snorts. The two of them are working a watch shift together. Souji’s been waiting for it to be their turn; Chie and Yukiko are the only couple who always take watch together, and it’s taken a while to cycle through to Souji and Minato. He could have asked any time, but some part of him wanted the intimacy of watch. The conversations they’ve had during the day have been lighter, more pleasant, almost fun. Souji likes being with Minato, he’s decided. Souji feels safer like that. 

“You never talk about it,” Souji moans. “Just like you never wear that scarf in your pack, even though it’s obvious you need it.” 

“Did you inherit your lack of tact from your parents or did you learn it growing up?” Minato jokes. Or at least Souji thinks he’s joking. He keeps his voice neutral with a hint of bored during most conversation. Souji thinks he’s started to learn the subtle nuances between playful and unimpressed, however, mainly because he can relate it to his own tone. Souji has trouble working out how to pitch his voice just right; he joined a drama club to improve his vocalisation, and now has complete control of his voice, which just makes it sound even more forced and controlled, and makes speaking more embarrassing. Or at least, speaking used to be embarrassing. Things like that aren’t really as important anymore. 

“My parents didn’t really teach me anything,” Souji shrugs. “They weren’t really around enough to do anything like that.” 

Minato stretches. “Were you like, orphaned? I mean, like, before this?” Souji shakes his head. “Oh. We- I was. Lost my parents in an accident when I was six.”

“My parents were just... busy all the time.” Souji feels bad, comparing his and Minato’s situations, but can’t stop himself from talking anyway. He doesn’t want to stop talking. He wants to talk to Minato forever, wants to know everything about him, wants to spend every moment with him, wants to be in his thoughts as much as Minato is in his. “They worked a lot. Had important jobs. Didn’t care about me.” 

“Stayed with a family like that for about two months,” Minato puffs out a cheek. “It sucked. Sorry you were saddled with that your whole life.” 

Souji bumps Minato’s shoulder. “We’re talking about you, remember? And your bite?” 

Rolling his eyes, Minato says, “Are we?”

“Yes. We are.” 

“I don’t want to. But it’s not like pretending it didn’t happen will change that it happened,” Minato mumbles. Souji’s noticed he takes that view on a lot of things. Minato rubs his eyes tiredly. “It’s nothing exciting. I was trying to save someone.” 

“Your sister?” Souji guesses. 

Minato cocks his head slightly, and the new angle pushes Souji’s heart off the top of a diving board and into six foot of freezing cold realisation that he completely and utterly   _ adores  _ Arisato Minato. Arisato Minato the person. Not Arisato Minato the cure. That he wanted to protect Minato because he’s Minato, not because he’s some great saviour. That he’d do anything to hear more of his words, more of his voice, more of his breathing. That he’d do anything for him. 

“My boyfriend,” Minato replies with a wry smile. 

“Oh,” Souji says numbly. 

Minato raises a brow. Maybe two, but Souji can only see one. “Oh?” 

“You just... Don’t seem the romantic type,” Souji tries to turn the corners of his mouth into a smile.

“Don’t I?” Minato punches Souji in the shoulder lightly. 

“Yep. That’s why. Romantic people just don’t punch their friends for no reason.” 

Minato throws his head backwards, and turns his face away from Souji. That means he’s smiling. He doesn’t like Souji to see him smile. Souji can’t work out why. 

“So what, you threw yourself into battle to save your boyfriend?” Souji asks. “It’s hard to see you as a knight in charming armour.” 

“I wasn’t,” Minato replies bluntly. “He died.” 

“Ah,” Souji is a fucking idiot. 

When Minato turns towards Souji, he’s still smiling. It’s a soft smile, latticed with remorse, but it’s the first genuine smile he’s let Souji see, and it breaks him. It breaks Seta Souji, and he knows he wants to see smiles like that for the rest of his life. Real smiles. Honest smiles. Smiles that show how Minato is feeling. He’d do anything to get that. Anything. “There’s that lack of tact again.”

Souji pushes back his fringe, and sighs. “What was his name?” 

“You’re asking about my dead boyfriend now too?” Souji thinks the tone is teasing, because Minato keeps talking. “You really like bringing up things I don’t want to talk about.”

“Sorry.” 

“It’s fine, I guess,” Minato exhales. “Mochizuki Ryoji.”

There’s a pause. Souji sucks his lip for a second. “So what went down?” 

Minato scratches his head. “There were like, about ten of us at first. Our entire dorm. My sister and Ryoji were kind of the masterminds behind it. I just kind of went with them. I always used to just go with what they wanted. You already know about my sister; she was one of the first to die. Then we trespassed on some gang’s land and Yoshino - Iori’s girlfriend - and... and someone else, were killed. Iori was shot too, but he survived. Hated himself for it. Ryoji stayed positive through it all, kept us all positive. He was amazing.”

Something flares in Souji’s chest. He tells himself there is no way he is jealous of a dead boy, but -

“It came out of nowhere,” Minato stares at the floor, his mouth parting slightly. “Just... We thought we’d cleared the area and we’d placed down all our supplies and... and this huge hoard just came out of nowhere. Iori was still recovering from his bullet wound and Yamagishi and Takeba didn’t have weapons and they just... grabbed Ryoji too fast for anyone to really process what was going on. They kept... they kept tearing at him. And he was screaming, and screaming, and he kept telling us it was fine and we should just let him die and everyone else ran but I couldn’t let him die like that. They kept ripping his face. I’ve never seen them do that before but they all went for his face and... I loved him. I loved his face. I didn’t want them doing that. Ryoji took a lot of pride in his appearance. I couldn’t... I couldn’t let it happen. So I forced my way in and- and I kind of held my arm up, as a shield, like this,” Minato pushes Souji down, so he’s lying on his back. He places his right hand under Souji’s head, and holds his left arm up above them. 

Souji suddenly becomes very aware of how close they are. He can feel Minato pressing against him, and his throat suddenly dries up. He swallows, and is acutely aware of how close his mouth is to Minato’s cheek when he asks, “Like this?”

“Exactly like this.” 

“Oh,” Souji swallows again. 

“They kept attacking him,” Minato continues, apparently not bothered by their proximity. “Kept ripping and tearing. I stayed there as a shield until Takeba picked them all off with her bow. Ryoji didn’t stop screaming the entire time. I kept trying to promise him it was okay, but he just started begging me to kill him.”

“And did you?” 

Minato pushes himself off of Souji, and he tries not to seem as disappointed as he is. “No. I couldn’t do it. I let him bleed out and die alone. Just like my sister did. Just like I should have.” 

Souji props himself up. “Tell me about him.” 

“What more is there to tell?” Minato rubs his eyes. Souji wonders if he’s crying. “You know everything now. That I’m a horrible person, and a coward, and that literally everyone deserves to be immune but me. I deserve to die more than anyone else.” 

“Hey,” Souji’s voice is firm. “That’s not true.”

“Sometimes,” Minato almost spits the words, but they’re not aimed at Souji, not hostile, “I hope that it is killing me, just agonisingly slowly. That it’s going to put me through hell to make up for everything I did to everyone else.” 

Souji’s lips tremble. He can’t find the words to respond to that. He notices Minato’s lips are trembling too. 

“The scarf in your bag... is that his?” Minato nods. “You must have loved him a great deal if you’d keep that for - how old did you say your cut was? Five months?” 

“Yeah,” Minato nods again. “I loved him a lot. He made me feel alive. Made me feel like I mattered. He felt permanent. Like home. He was the one thing I thought I’d never lose. I liked that feeling of constant safety I had around him. It was like, when we were together, nothing bad in the world could touch us. And, even before the Apathy Syndrome outbreak, we’d seen a lot of the bad things. So that safety was important.”

Souji feels his hands clench into fists as he realises that everything Ryoji was to Minato, he wanted to be. 

He can’t stop thinking about those lips. 

“You remind me of him,” Minato confesses. Souji’s stomach drops. “You carry the same sort of airs. The same-”

Souji doesn’t have time to listen to how he is similar to Ryoji, and Minato doesn’t have time to answer, because Souji is kissing him. Souji is done trying to fight the fact he thinks about Minato constantly, done trying to combat his almost obsession with making him happy, done acting like he doesn’t want this because he does, he does, he  _ does _ . He can’t sit there feeling bitter that he isn’t some dead kid who liked scarves. He can’t sit there thinking about Minato, thinking about touching Minato, thinking about protecting Minato, thinking about  _ being _ what that dead kid was to him. He’s been ordered around and passive his entire life and he is done with it. He is finally taking action, taking charge, leading like everyone has wanted him to his whole life, and  _ fucking hell does it feel good _ . 

He has literally never kissed anyone in his life. Not his parents. Not his uncle. Nanako has pressed her lips to his cheek before saying goodnight, and that’s the closest he’s ever come. But now he’s holding the back of Minato’s head and his ratty hair is twisted around Souji’s slender fingers, and those soft lips are between Souji’s and he’s sucking at them oh so slightly. A sudden part of his brain tells him to stick his tongue out and lick Minato, and the rest of his brain responds by scrunching up in disgust, which makes him pull away. Minato is looking up at him with shocked and wide eyes, and Souji is trying to tell his tongue it is not licking anything, but Minato grabs him and pulls him in for another kiss before he can quite communicate the message. 

He wonders how often Ryoji accidentally licked his partner. Maybe that’s another thing the two of them can have in common. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im so sorry 2 everyone who follows my twitter and has had to hear me complain about how much of an ass yosuke is in this fic... im literally the reason yosuke is an ass in this fic and yet @ yosuke: why are u like this,


	4. VIII. THE CHARIOT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for strangulation in section iv - described in very little detail so might be possible to skim but please stay safe!!

Scintilla (noun) – a spark or very small thing; a minute thing

**i. skill**

“You can’t be serious, Souji-kun,” Yukiko places a hand on her hip and gapes. “You can’t  _ kiss _ someone just after they get done telling you about their dead boyfriend!”

“Why not?” Chie shrugs. “If I heard you say anything about any kind of boyfriend, I’d kiss you to make you shut up instantly.”

Yukiko flails her arms around. “Chie, that’s not what we’re discussing!”

“I’m just saying,” Chie tightens the knot in her shoe laces, “you say anything about dating a boy and I’ll silence you. With my lips. It’s gay and romantic. And makes you stop talking about boys.”

Minato doesn’t want to intrude. He’s hanging back, nervous, and he feels bad eavesdropping, but he can’t help it. He’s curious. So he lurks just behind the tent that the five of them have been sharing, holding some weird breadlike thing that Fuuka has concocted for breakfast, and his breath. 

“I... I don’t know why I did it,” Souji half-laughs. “I just... Kept thinking about how I wanted him to say the sort of things he was saying about Ryoji about me.” 

“And then you kissed him?” Minato can’t see Yukiko’s face, but from her tone, she has an eyebrow raised. 

Souji spreads his hands. “And then I kissed him.” 

“Not very romantic, are you?” Yukiko laughs. She snorts. 

Nanako giggles, “Big bro was never very good at talking to people he thought was pretty. He was always asking dad for advice back home!”

“Hey,” Souji interrupts, “I am clearly doing a good job at talking to Minato, since -”

“Oh,” chuckling, Minato chooses that moment to push his way into the the second campsite, and hands Chie a loaf of almost bread, “so you think I’m pretty?” 

Chie takes the bread with a hearty chuckle, and Minato catches Souji’s face flick between his usual blankness, and flustered. It sends a wave of warmth through Minato, and he notices his hands are shaking as he hands Yukiko a loaf. 

Souji swallows. “Well, uh, yes?” He says nervously. “Is that bad?”

“Oh, no, no,” Nanako takes hers and Souji’s loaves, and sniffs them cautiously. “I’m glad, actually. Hanamura, you’ve got a -”

A growl from Yosuke tells him that he’s heard, and he places the final bread attempt on a rock around the fire. Not that Yosuke means anything to Minato, but having someone who openly hates him so much around him all the time is exhausting. Everything is exhausting to Minato enough without dealing with a sulking teenage boy who resents him for reasons he isn’t even one hundred per cent certain of. His now breadless hands feel awkward, and Minato is acutely aware of how close Souji’s hands are, of how much larger they are than his, of how good it would feel to hold them. 

He lets his hands hang awkwardly from his sides. His palms are warm, sweaty. He chews his lip nervously, and makes a point of looking anywhere but Souji. His eyes wind up working their way over to him anyway, and Souji offers him a smile. Minato gives him a nervous, flustered one of his own. 

He somehow ends up with Souji’s arms around his shoulder. He’s not sure how; the whole thing was fast, but slow, but fast, and it passes in a haze. Minato winces. He had entered the conversation with the intention of being suave and coy, and is now a blushing mess. 

“Anyway,” Minato tries to ignore the fact his voice is breaking and cracking, and he’s a dirty, sweaty boy in a filthy, tattered school uniform. “I noticed your friends don’t have much faith in your romantic ability.” 

“You notice,” Souji takes a moment to kiss Minato’s nose quickly and lightly, “correctly.” He finishes with a second. 

Minato raises an eyebrow. “Well then, let me settle this,” he turns to Yukiko and Chie, who are both wearing grins the likes of which Minato hasn’t seen since before the outbreak. “I can promise you that Seta Souji is the least tactful and least romantic person I have ever met.” 

“I knew it,” Chie mutters triumphantly under her breath. 

“But,” Minato continues, “he is a very good kisser. So I guess I can let him off.” 

Souji grins lopsided at him, before kissing him again. It’s soft, gentle, and broken up quickly by Yosuke groaning. Minato clears his throat. 

“Other than that,” he finishes, “I don’t have much confidence in Souji’s abilities as a romantic partner.” 

“Hmm.” Souji pauses. “Well, I don’t have much confidence in your abilities to pitch a tent, but I sleep in one you help put up anyway.”

Minato nudges Souji’s shoulder playfully. Nanako asks, with a gleam in her eyes, “Does this mean you two are going to get married?” 

Souji’s eyes widen, but his brows furrow in a way that tells Minato he’s used to weird, on the spot, loaded questions from Nanako. They’re saved from answering however, by Yosuke, who snarls, “I think, Nanako-chan, that we all have much more pressing issues on our minds than romance. Like, you know, staying alive?” 

He throws down the sticks he was playing with and storms off. Nanako chews her lips. “Did I say something wrong?” She whispers. 

Souji has his hands placed supportively on her shoulders in seconds. He’s assuring her that no, she didn’t, while Chie muses that Yosuke never had a problem with her and Yukiko’s relationship. 

“It’s weird,” she says. “Little things like that - dating and stuff - never bothered him before. It’s like he’s a different person. He barely eats, he’s hostile and confrontational. I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

Some cog in Minato’s mind gets stuck and judders back and forth over the same thoughts again and again and again. Yosuke’s not the same, not eating, a different person. He’s changed. He’s changing. Minato pinches the bridge of his nose, and clenches his eyes, remembering usually docile classmates having rows, remembering respected scientists disregarding their morals, remembering leaflets warning people to keep an eye out for out-of-character hostility. 

He shakes his head. No. No way. They’d have noticed. Someone would have noticed. Someone had to have noticed, because Minato can’t handle the idea of someone else going through this alone.

 

**ii. control**

Yukari is carving arrows. Minato loves watching her do it. He doesn’t know where she learnt how, but she does it with such confidence, so quickly, like the wood is an extension of herself, and she completely dominates it. Minato isn’t watching her today though. Instead, he is sat with Souji and Chie, who are telling him an exciting story about Chie fighting a bear that Minato isn’t entirely sure he believes. Nanako is watching Yukari intently. She’s calling her big sis and it’s making Yukari beam, and she’s desperate to learn how to shoot and carve too. 

“It’s much more ladylike than kicking your enemies,” Yukari notes, her voice clogged with cheer. “But, unlike your friend Chie, it means I can only fight from a distance.” 

“I can’t fight at all,” Nanako whines, “so you gotta teach me!” 

Junpei is patrolling the perimetre. Yukiko says she saw a hoard resting nearby. The cold that’s set in seems to force them into hibernation, but even if they’re sleeping, they shouldn’t take chances, and should avoid loud noises. Junpei  _ should  _ be on cooking duty, but while he waits for the fire to warm sufficiently, he’s decided to become a silent protector. 

“I have this theory,” Fuuka explains to an enthralled Yukiko, “that the sticking thing that covers the infected during winter is... almost like a cocoon.”

“Oh! That would make sense!” Yukiko claps her hands together. “Since it comes from butterflies right?”

“Right! Only the infected don’t turn into anything when they break out of their shells,” Fuuka continues, “so it’s not exactly the same. Without an investigation, I don’t think we can really be sure.” 

“Well, whyever it happens, we’re lucky it does,” Yukiko nods. “Because it at least means things are almost normal through winter.” 

Minato looks down at his own arm. It’s covered by his blazer, but he knows it’s oozing the same silky sap that has covered the hoard that Yukiko saw earlier. It’s kind of disgusting to think about, so Minato tries not to, but it’s hard not to notice when he can almost pull thread from the cut running down his arm. He suddenly feels self-conscious about it, and is overcome with the thought of Souji seeing it and thinking it’s gross and - what the fuck is wrong with him? Souji knows he’s bitten. Souji’s seen the bite. It’s fine. It’s fine. 

“Are you alright?” Souji asks. “You’re shaking. Are you cold? I’ll go grab you a blanket out of my tent.” 

Souji’s up and on his feet before Minato even has a chance to answer. Chie looks at him with heavy-lidded eyes and a knowing smile. 

“Who would have thought,” she laughs, “that even when the world has gone to shit, couples can still have their honeymoon phase?” 

Minato can feel his face heating up, and so looks away. Nanako runs over and shows Minato the arrow she’s made. It’s not sleek, it’s not smooth and it’s not straight, so it’s nothing like Yukari’s, but it’s beautiful all the same. 

“Here we are,” Souji throws something over him and Nanako, and she smiles a thanks. “Chie,” he says, turning away from them as Minato smooths the blanket out over the two of them, “do you remember where I put my gun?” 

“Woah, woah, woah, woah,” Yukari rises from her seat, “you never told us one of you had a gun.” 

Souji shrugs. “We all have lethal weapons. What difference does it make if it’s a gun or a spear or a sword?” 

“We only use it for special occasions,” Nanako says with an educated nod. Minato can’t help but wonder what qualifies as special. Birthdays? Christmas? Funerals? 

“Well, that’s not exactly true, is it, Nanako-chan?” Yosuke chimes. The fact that he’s speaking at all should have alerted the group to the fact that something is wrong, but no one says anything. No one makes any comments or moves. Yosuke stalks in from the edge of the circle, and stops beside where Chie is sat. He’s stood opposite where Souji is standing, looming over Minato and Nanako, sat beside him. Yukari is stood just behind him, and watches him with an expression of bewilderment, like she’d forgotten he was even part of the group at all. “It’s not like it’s used to celebrate things. Not yet anyway.” 

“Not yet?” Yukiko asks from behind Minato. “But, Yosuke-kun, we agreed that the gun should only ever be used for-” 

It happens slowly, but at the same time, it happens so fast that Minato doesn’t see it happen at all, and once it’s done, he knows he should have realised it would come. Yosuke pulls something from behind him with a click and points it at Minato instantly but also lazily. Minato can’t tell which speed is real and which speed is imagined, and the pounding in his ears that echoes as he realises the click was the safety of the gun being removed and that what’s pointed at him is the gun itself doesn’t help him gather his thoughts. 

“Tell them, Souji, what we use this gun for,” Yosuke takes a step forwards, Chie and Yukari scramble backwards, away from him. 

“It’s... used for killing the infected before they turn,” Souji mumbles. 

Yosuke takes another lurch forward as he repeats, “It’s used for killing the infected before they turn.”

Minato wants to push himself up, but his arms are shaking so badly that they can’t support his weight. Nanako wraps her hands around one of his and holds them tightly. She whispers that she’s scared. Minato is scared too, he thinks. He isn’t sure. Dying doesn’t bother him, not really, but as his trembling eyes look up at Yosuke, look at him ambling in jolted movements that look more like a crude imitation of walking than actual walking itself, like some shitty puppeteer is pulling him along half-assedly and not paying any attention to the aesthetic appeal of the performance, he thinks that it would be a waste to die like this. Not a waste of his lives, but of everyone else’s. If they could just... If they’d just made it to Yakushima, then dying would be fine. He doesn’t care about dying once whatever’s keeping him safe is in the hands of people who can make everyone else safe. 

Dying now, at the hands of some stupid boy who’s lost his grip on morality or whatever the fuck had happened to Yosuke, makes a mockery of every death that had happened before his. 

Instinct says to close his eyes when he feels the cold barrel of the gun push against his forehead, but Minato thinks if Yosuke is really going to do this, then he’s going to look it in the eyes as he does. 

“Been a while since you got bit, right Arisato?” Yosuke’s voice is distant, but also omnipotent. “Could turn any day now, couldn’t you?” 

Minato feels sick. His mouth tastes like salt and blood, and he can’t stop shaking. 

“Really, this is the only way to protect everyone,” Yosuke explains. It’s like the part of him that’s still human is trying to justify this, trying to make himself feel better about it. “We have to keep everyone safe. We have to.” Yosuke nods. 

Souji’s katana wouldn’t be faster than Yosuke’s finger. Yukari’s arrow won’t kill him fast enough to stop him shooting before he dies. Minato has no way out of this. None at all. 

“You know, at the start, we had four bullets,” the gun is pulled a little away from Minato’s forehead, but not far enough that he could move out of it’s firing line. “One for Nanako-chan, one for Dojima-san, one for Adachi-san, and one for Souji. But we didn’t need those, because Dojima and Adachi fucked off and left us to watch all my friends die. We let one of them kill himself with it. That’s one bullet gone.” Yosuke pushes the gun into Minato’s skull again. “Don’t worry, dude, I have experience. I killed my girlfriend with this gun-” 

“She wasn’t your girlfriend,” Souji says sternly. 

“She should have been!” Yosuke screams, turning to face Souji. Minato winces as he does. “She would’ve been if she hadn’t gone and gotten herself infected! If she had whatever the fuck he has! She would have been!”

Yosuke showers Minato in his spit as he yells. He’d recoil in a normal circumstance, but the gun kind of seems a little more pressing than Yosuke’s saliva. 

Souji’s voice is calm and steady. “If this is about Saki-san, then take it out on someone who was there. Take it out on me.” 

“Or, you could, y’know, just put the gun down,” Chie adds. “That’d be nice.”

“Shut up!” Yosuke yells. “All of you shut up! Don’t try to fucking reason with me! This bastard has been asking for this from day one! And if I hear one more fucking word out of any of you I’ll- I’ll... Don’t look at me like I’m the bad guy! I’m protecting you, protecting everyone! There is no cure! There is no immune saviour! It’s a con! Nothing’s ever going to get better! No one is coming to save us or help us! This is how it is now,  and if you’re bitten, you turn. I won’t let that happen.” 

Minato doesn’t know if people usually feel sorry for the person holding them at gunpoint, but he does. Dear God, he does. 

“Please...” The tiniest squeak of a plea comes from beside Minato. Nanako is begging, her voice strained. “Please don’t fight. Please.” 

Yosuke groans. “Can’t you see? I’m doing this for you, Nanako-chan! I’m-”

Just for a split second, he pulls the gun away from Minato. That second is all it takes. Minato hears Souji’s katana slide from its sheath, and in a blur of movement watches Yosuke get tackled to the ground. He flinches when he hears the gun fire, because some part of his brain hasn’t processed that it’s not aimed at him anymore,and Chie runs to help Junpei, who is writhing on the floor, tangled up with Yosuke and covered in blood. 

“Are you alright?” Souji says, pulling Minato up. He nods. 

Yukari snaps, “Right people, let’s start packing up, because if that screaming didn’t wake the hoard then the fucking gunshot did!” 

Fuuka nods, but Yukiko says, “There won’t be time! We’ll have to fight!” 

“Fight all of them?” Souji shakes his head. “Impossible. Junpei’s injured and Yosuke’s a wreck and-”

“I saw them, Souji-kun,” Yukiko begs. “I saw them. I know how close they are.” 

“Then why the fuck did we set up a base this close to them!” Junpei’s voice is heavy with pain. Yosuke is roaring with anger and cursing and kicking and Chie is having a hard time holding him down. She beckons Yukiko over, and Junpei winces in agony. 

Minato positions Nanako behind him. “They’re close. I can hear them. We’ll fight.”

“Oh! Oh, he can hear them! Is he part of their hivemind now too!” Yosuke bellows. 

“Yukiko, Yosuke-kun is burning up,” Chie remarks nervously. “You don’t think-”

Yukiko is grabbing rope. Minato can’t believe they’re going to tie Yosuke up, but it looks like it. It looks like they’re going to tie Yosuke up. This isn’t real. Holy shit, this isn’t real. “Check him. Check him!” 

Too much is happening. Minato frantically grabs his sword, but his trembling hands can’t hold it properly. 

“Oh God,” Chie says. All the life has drained from her face. “Oh God, he’s-” 

“Let go!” Yosuke’s flailing is faster, and his kicking and scratching increases in intensity. “Leave me alone! Don’t look-” 

Souji’s rubbing his eyes. “Yukari, get to higher ground. Chie, leave Yosuke to Junpei, Fuuka and Yukiko and get in formation; you’re the strongest member of our group and we need you. Minato- Minato, please, keep Nanako safe.” 

Minato nods. He holds his sword in front of him. He knows, if nothing else, then Nanako can at least use him as a shield. Like Ryoji should have. He’s wondering if it was the stage of the infection that made Yosuke lash out like this, or if his and Souji’s relationship was the final spark that made him short circuit. 

He bites the skin off of his lower lip. He has to push these thoughts out of his head. He steadies his grip, takes deep breath, and focuses on the here, the now. He has to calm down. He has to. If not for his sake, then for Nanako’s. For Souji. For everyone. 

 

**iii. focused**

There’s far too much for Minato to think about. He can’t concentrate on anything. It’s all he can do to keep his sword in his hands. At some point, he kneels down and lets Nanako climb up onto his back, but by the time he’s done it, he has forgotten about it. 

He’s so tired. He is so, so tired. 

He tries to ignore the fact Yosuke just tried to kill him, but he can’t stop thinking about it. Just like he can’t stop thinking about the gleam in his sister’s eyes, or the sparkle of Ryoji’s smile. He can’t stop thinking about the sound of Chidori’s rare laugh, or how small Ken was; he was a baby. He was just a baby. 

The people he’s lost swim through his thoughts, his vision. Classmates, teachers, co-workers, neighbours, friends. Everyone he knew, everyone he grew up with, went to school with, shared his life with, is gone, bar Fuuka, Yukari and Junpei. And he nearly let Yosuke take their sacrifices away. He nearly let their deaths mean nothing. 

“Keep your head down, Nanako,” he grunts. “Keep your head down and you’ll be fine.” 

She nods into his shoulder blades. Minato makes another awkward, clumsy slice, and watches three of the infected fall to arrows that came out of nowhere. He tries to ignore Fuuka crying as Yosuke tears at her face, tries not to think about the state that Ryoji’s face was in, tries not to think about Ryoji. 

His thoughts are all over the place. God, he is a mess.

Almost as if they have a will of their own, Minato’s eyes roll over to Souji. He watches as he moves with fluidity, grace, professionalism. Minato wishes he could move like that, wishes he could separate his thoughts from his actions and fight no matter how much stress he’s under. His left arm feels heavy, like it’s weighing him down, slowing him down, and he wonders if maybe he should give up on fighting at all and just become Nanako’s shield. He’d be more useful like that, he thinks. 

He hears Fuuka scream, and turns to see Yosuke’s tossed her aside, and Yukiko has thrown herself on top of him and the two seem to be wrestling. 

Don’t let this happen. Don’t let Yosuke break free. Don’t let him- 

“ARISATO!” Yosuke’s enraged voice is belted across the area. “I AM GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!” 

And that was exactly what Minato is praying wouldn’t happen. 

Nanako’s grip on his shoulders tightens, and Minato winds his way through infected bodies, dead and alive, trying to get out of Yosuke’s line of sight. 

It doesn’t work. He’s not fast enough. Something barrels into him and knocks him back. His arm, his left arm, bashes into a tree and a tidal wave of pain comes crashing down through him, winding him. He hears Nanako wince as well, and a new form of anger fuels him. 

He doesn’t realise until Yosuke has both of his wrists locked in his steel grip that the impact, and the flinching of his left arm, had made him drop his sword. 

He has absolutely no way to fight back, and Yosuke has the most terrifying, unhinged smile Minato has ever seen.

 

**iv. balance**

It becomes very clear that Minato has two options; the first is to save himself. The second is to save Nanako. He can’t force Yosuke’s hands, which are so much larger than him and tightening around his neck, off of him, can’t tackle Yosuke, without dropping Nanako, abandoning her, leaving her to the hoard. He can’t protect Nanako without failing to protect himself, and letting Yosuke finish him off. 

Is it selfish of him to hope that someone else will notice? To hope that someone else will protect him? That someone else will save him? He doesn’t deserve their help in the first place. This is how it should be. 

He thinks for a moment of all the lives that are over. All the lives he couldn’t save. He can feel Nanako’s heart beating against his back. It’s fast, but small. Such a tiny heart. Such a tiny person. 

He’s lucky, he realises, because he won’t die alone. He won’t be put through what he put his sister through. He won’t be put through what he put Ryoji through. But he won’t be able to save anyone.

Wait. No. He’s wrong. He’ll save Nanako. He moves his hands away from his neck, away from where he’d been clawing at Yosuke’s, and wraps them tightly around Nanako’s legs. 

He’ll keep her safe. He’ll help one person. It won’t make up for all the damage he caused, but he’ll help one person. 

“Fuck!” Yosuke hisses suddenly, recoiling and pulling his hands away from Minato, almost as if he’d been burnt. Minato drops to his knees, hoping the impact doesn’t hurt Nanako too much, and tries to regain his breath. Every inhale is like swallowing fire, and his throat feels ripped, shattered, destroyed. 

Yosuke is trying to pull an arrow out of his knee. It’s been shot clean through, and he can’t stand properly. “Shit! Fuck!” He cries with pain as he tugs. “Fucking hell! Fuck!”

And then Yosuke is screaming. Yosuke is screaming because someone has crept behind him and buried their teeth in his neck and is covering him in the sticky, web-like thread that Minato’s own left arm is covered him, and is tearing at his flesh and pulling him apart. Minato scoops up Nanako, ignoring his own breathlessness, ignoring his own lack of sword, and runs, He covers her eyes as he does, half closes his own eyes. 

Souji barks out a command that makes it sound like, despite the odds, they’ve nearly cleared the area. But Minato can still hear Yosuke screaming. Somewhere along the line, Yosuke’s screaming becomes Ryoji’s, which becomes Ken’s sobs, which becomes his sister’s laboured breaths, which becomes the sound of his car screeching to a halt and his mother yelling at his father to look out. 

He doesn’t know how long the screaming lasts for. He doesn’t know who it belongs to anymore. 

He thinks, eventually, it’s his own, and it’s done as Souji pries Nanako’s hands from the front of Minato’s shirt, and runs his hand up and down his back, and lets him bury his head in Souji’s shoulder, and cry for as long as he needs to, about everything he needs to. It’s a small gesture of affection, sitting with someone, comforting someone, but it means the world to Minato.

 

**v. physicality**

There’s some unspoken agreement not to talk about that night. Minato doesn’t know where it comes from, but it’s there. No one mentions Yosuke’s name. No one talks about how Fuuka got the scar that runs across her face. No one points out the huge chunk of hair that Yukiko’s missing, torn from her by the hand of a stray infected boy they thought they’d killed. 

It’s getting colder. The heart of winter is beating soundly, and the cold is making Minato so, so sleepy. He’s exhausted. His left arm feels like lead. He feels like he’s dragging the rest of the group down. He feels like he can’t keep up with them. 

Souji holds his hand and pulls him along when he can’t go any further. Yukari thinks they’ll make it to Yakushima by spring. 

The first day it snows, Fuuka and Minato are watching the camp while the others have split up to search the area, search for supplies and gather firewood. Minato’s infection has grown. Brown, woodlike skin peaks out from the sleeve of his blazer. He feels sick just looking at it. He wonders how long until his whole hand will look like it’s made of wood, until his whole arm is infected, until his whole body is rotten. 

“We’ll be in Yakushima by then,” Fuuka promises. “You won’t reach that point.” 

Minato winces when the snow touches visibly infected skin. It feels like hot needles are being poked through his flesh. He shivers. 

Fuuka says, “I’m sorry that it’s so cold, even with your scarf on.” 

Minato nods into the soft, yellow material, and pulls it up over mouth. “It helps,” he mumbles into it. “It helps a lot.” 

“Takeba and Iori like it,” Fuuka smiles. “It makes them happy to see you wearing it. They talk about it all the time.” 

He’s noticed. It’s just a small thing, a tiny thing, a perfectly natural thing, to have started doing, but Yukari and Junpei look like he’s pulled the sun out of the sky and handed it to them when they see it. He doesn’t understand why. 

“I think it’s because we never talk about them,” Fuuka’s gaze is fixed firmly on the ground, “and that makes them think we’ve forgotten them. But we haven’t. And this is like, a reminder that they exist - tangible evidence that we remember their existence. A physicalisation of the fact that we carry the people we love and lose with us.” 

Minato smiles. It’s hidden in the scarf, but he smiles. Fuuka’s grip tightens around the ebony handle of her intricately carved naginata, and Minato says, softly, “If we remember that we loved them, they’re never really lost.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hooly hoo i did not proof read this bcs 1) im way 2 tired 2) do u really think i could read yosuke clinging to the last threads of his humanity + trying to justify why killing minato was a good idea more than once 3) im dyslexic af and like. ive been looking over this fic and even chapters i proofread abt 3 times still have errors so im like . what the point . also i promise im talking like real diagnosed dyslexia and not using my sld as an adjective 
> 
> anyway thanks for sticking w me and w this fic!! uve left so many lovely comments which have made me cry and warmed my heart!! can u believe we're halfway there !! lets go to yakushima together everyone!!


	5. XII. THE HANGED MAN

Mitigate (verb) – to become milder in force or intensity

 

**i. yield**

Souji hopes that the group’s moral will increase the closer they get to the docks, the closer they get to spring. They’ve made it through winter. They’re almost there. He desperately wants this to boost their spirits. But as the weather gets warmer, he notices they slow down. They’re losing motivation. They’re falling apart. 

It would be a waste for them to survive snowstorms and below freezing temperatures if they can’t make it to the docks before summer. Souji doesn’t think he can survive another summer, another however many months of constant exhaustion, of constant fighting, of the infected springing up everywhere and being too scared to turn a corner for fear. He doesn’t want Nanako to have to suffer through that again either. He doesn’t want anyone to suffer through it. 

“We’ll get there,” Yukari promises. “We’ll get there soon. Before spring. I know it.” 

Junpei hangs his head and Fuuka runs her fingers down the shaft of her naginata. Souji hadn’t known she could fight until she stepped up after- after Yosuke’s death. 

No one talks about Yosuke anymore. Not Chie, not Yukiko, not Nanako. He isn’t the first friend Souji’s lost, not the first friend he’s seen die, but Souji can’t get him out of his head. He trusted Yosuke. He loved Yosuke. He spent a year fighting for his life with Yosuke. He thought he and Yosuke would be fighting together until the day they died. And to see how quickly that changed, to see how quickly Yosuke changed... it terrifies him. He lies awake at night wondering how soon it is until he changes like that. Wonders whether Nanako will have to watch it. Wonders how Nanako will cope, if she’ll end up in his position, lying there, just counting the days until she has nothing and no one left. 

The only person who’s safe is Minato. Or, at least, Souji had thought Minato was the only one who was safe. Since the thing with Yosuke, Minato seems a lot more mortal to Souji. Just because he’s unable to get infected doesn’t mean he can’t die as easily as anyone else, doesn’t mean he isn’t as fragile or human as anyone else. The bags under his eyes and the scars littering his arms are proof enough of that. 

“What are we going to do?” Chie asks. “When we get there, I mean?”

Yukari chews her bottom lip. “Well, I guess you guys will set up a permanent camp, right? To wait for Nanako-chan’s father? We’ll look for a boat, and head out to sea. If we can’t find one, I guess will make them.” 

“I don’t want that.”

Seven pairs of eyes flick towards a little girl, with hands are folded solidly in her lap and a solemn gaze. 

“Nanako-chan, I know splitting up is hard and you don’t want us to go,” Yukari says, softly, “but we have to get to Yakushima. We have to find the Kirijo Group, and-” 

Nanako shakes her head. “I don’t want to wait for dad,” her voice is harsh, sharp. “I want to stay with you guys!”

The part of Souji that had been dreading discussing Yakushima shrinks. He had worried about this, been torn between leaving Minato and keeping his promise to Dojima. Hearing Nanako decide that she wants that promise broken makes the decision he has been putting off for him. 

“Are you sure?” He says, his voice steady, slow, comforting. “This is a really big choice, and-”

“I’m sure,” Nanako kicks her legs back and forth. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and dad’s probably already at the docks waiting for us! If he isn’t, then we can leave him a note! But I don’t want us to stop being together.” Her big, brown eyes lock with Souji’s cold steel pair, and she smiles. “We’re a family! I don’t want us to be apart!”

A family. He sees Junpei and Yukari shoot each other looks out of the corner of his eyes, and wonders if they feel the same. “Are you-”

“I won’t change my mind, big bro,” Nanako states matter-of-factly. “I promise.”

“Well, if she won’t back down,” Chie cheers, “then I guess we’re all going to Yakushima!”

Minato’s grip on Souji’s hand tightens. Souji’s thoughts drift to whether he feels like they’re a family as well, and the idea that he does makes a small smile slip across his lips.

 

**ii. surrender**

Most days, Souji thinks about giving up. 

Not about actually giving up; he thinks about what would happen if they did. He hacks through some overgrown shrubbery, and takes Minato’s hand after sheathing his katana. Minato takes it almost greedily, letting Souji pull him along and navigate his path. Nanako is with Yukari, who’s teaching her about archery, Yukiko and Chie are walking in front, doing cute, couple-ish things, laughing loudly and wrapping their arms around each other and pulling the other in for impromptu kisses. They’re making the most out of the safety of the cold, taking the time to act normal, act safe, because they almost are. Junpei is limping on Fuuka, despite the fact that his recovering bullet wound is in his arm and does not affect his walking whatsoever. Souji wonders what would happen to them all if he didn’t want to carry on. Who would step up as leader? What they would do, what they would think. 

Some part of him, some small part he doesn’t want to listen to, wonders if Minato would give up with him. Some part of him wants Minato to give up with him. Is that wrong of him? He figures it is. But as they get closer and closer to the docks, he finds himself less willing to actually arrive there. He doesn’t have to say goodbye to Minato anymore, he doesn’t have to consider saying goodbye, or the two of them going their separate ways, but the Kirijo Group terrifies him. What they’ll do to Minato terrifies him. Souji’s worked in hospitals, and the thought of Minato being tested on, the thought of seeing him in that sort of state, makes him flinch. 

Minato’s pace is slow, and his breathing heavy. He wheezes, “I can’t wait to make camp for tonight,” and his grip on Souji’s hand relaxes. This only makes Souji tighten his own. 

From a little behind, Yukari calls, “If we walk through until morning, I think we’ll make it to Yakushima by tomorrow.” 

“I have been bitten by greasy infected monsters, held at gunpoint and unable to shower for months,” Minato whinges, “but I draw the line at missing a night of rest. In fact, thinking about going to sleep is the only reason I’m still awake.” 

Nanako chuckles. “You’re funny.” 

“It’s the constant misery and suffering,” Minato states with a nod. “Turns you into an instant comedian.” 

A hollow silence follows, and Souji is acutely aware of Yosuke’s absence. He misses his sarcastic remarks, his pitiful attempts at puns, his bright laugh and offkey singing. He misses his best friend. 

Things have been quieter since Yosuke has been gone. Calmer. The tension that ran through the group has almost completely been stripped, and they’re working as a unit in a much more fluid, much more skilled way than before. But there feels like a huge gaping hole, a hole where Yosuke should be. The real Yosuke. The old Yosuke. Not whoever the fuck died in that ambush. Not him. 

“When we get to the docks, I’m taking a bath,” Junpei moans. “In the ocean. I’m just diving in. Relaxing. Getting clean. You know, the good shit.” 

Yukari rolls her eyes. “Junpei-kun, don’t act like you regularly bathed before the outbreak.” 

Fuuka stifles a giggle, and Junpei cries, “I resent that, Yuka-tan! That’s unfair! Also I love baths!” 

It hadn’t crossed Souji’s mind that other people would have other plans about what they’re going to do at the docks. He supposes he’s been so caught up in his own concerns, he hasn’t really considered anyone else’s. Some leader he is. He can barely keep himself going, let alone support all the others. He isn’t even holding Nanako’s hand right now. He isn’t even protecting his own blood relative. 

Fuuka starts saying how she’s going to try and wash her clothes when they get there. She wants to look presentable when they get to the Kirijo Group, she explains. She thinks she can help. She’s noted down a lot about the infected, and about Minato’s behaviour. She hopes they’ll take her seriously and allow her to at least look in on their work. 

 

**iii. sacrifice**

“Have you thought about it?” Souji asks. “About the Kirijo Group and what’ll happen once we get there?” 

Minato shrinks into his scarf. The brightness of the yellow brings out the starchy paleness of his skin, and only serves to make the boy seem even sicker than he is. Souji feels like he’s getting worse. He tells himself it’s just the cold, that it’s taking a toll on Minato the same way it does on the infected, but part of him can’t stop hearing other people’s words. Yosuke’s warning that there is no cure. Minato’s own expressed desire that his infection is just killing him quicker. Souji’s scared- No, Souji is  _ terrified _ of losing Minato. The boy is made of sand, and Souji has to constantly pat him down to keep him safe, to keep him structured, to keep him at his side. Souji is petrified that he is somehow letting that sand slip through his hands, that the tide will tug it away and break it apart and scatter it across the land. Souji doesn’t want that. 

“I think about it all the time,” Minato mumbles. 

“Are you scared?” Souji asks. Minato shakes his head. “What do you think will happen?”

“I’ve kind of decided that, like, there are two options. The first is that whatever makes me immune is in my DNA, so some scientists take a couple blood samples and then they’re done. I don’t think that’s likely, though, since my sister pretty much shared my exact genetic makeup or whatever and she died anyway, so it’s probably some gland thing, or maybe an abnormality in one of my cells or some shit, so that means they’ll have to do the second scenario, which is operate on me. Depending on what gland is stopping it, and what it does, that’ll probably kill me.” 

Souji freezes and flinches at Minato’s casual discussion of his own death. “And that doesn’t scare you? The fact that you might die?”

“Not really,” Minato shrugs. “Maybe it does scare me a little more now than it did before, but, fuck, I don’t know. The thought of six billion people dying because I’m too selfish to do what’s got to be done scares me more, maybe?”

“Do you want to do it?” Souji brushes Minato’s fringe out of his face, and holds it behind his ear so he can see both of Minato’s eyes at once. Minato can’t quite seem to meet Souji’s gaze now both his eyes are exposed, and his glance skitters from left to right, focusing on anything but Souji. “Because you don’t have to if you don’t want to.” 

“It doesn’t matter what I want. It’s what has to be done. What needs to be done. I have the power to do it. It would be a waste not to.” 

Maybe Souji is just being selfish. “I don’t want you to die,” he chokes out in a whisper. Minato’s gaze finally rests on him, for a moment, and then looks downwards sadly.

“It’s kind of a shitty position we’ve found ourselves in,” he says, meekly. “Dying isn’t really fair on you. Staying alive isn’t fair on anyone else.”

Souji presses his forehead against Minato’s. Their height difference means he has to lean slightly awkwardly to do so, but he does it regardless. “It’s a very noble thing you’re doing,” he breathes, “giving your life to save everyone else’s.” 

“I’m not doing it to be noble,” Minato mutters, “I’m doing it because I have to, because the other options are just... wrong.”

“I think it’s noble,” Souji kisses Minato’s forehead lightly. 

Almost as if all the energy the boy had has been drained, Minato murmurs back, “You think too much of me,” before falling silent.

 

**iv. submission**

It’s Chie who sees the sea first, and she calls back to them, jumping like a hyperactive child. 

“We’re here!” She cries. “We’re here, we’re here, we’re here!” 

Yukiko’s chuckling, and telling her to calm down. Souji thinks the lack of sleep has gone to her head. Minato is slung over his shoulders, sleeping, in a piggy-back position that Nanako has used so often. It surprises Souji that the boy isn’t that much lighter than his cousin, and it worries him too. Nanako herself is holding Souji’s hand, rubbing sleep from her eyes with a newfound enthusiasm as they approach the horizon. Minato snores softly in Souji’s ear. Souji smiles lightly in response. 

“Hey,” he half-whispers, “wake up. We’ve made it.” 

Yukari sounds like she’s on the verge of tears and she and Chie race down to the beach. It’s still a considerable way to the docks, but Souji can see it in the distance, and his heart is filled with pride. They actually did it. They finished what they started. Souji is so close to keeping his promise, to fulfilling his promise. 

Nanako tugs on his arm, and he looks down at her. “Do you think dad is waiting for us?” She asks. 

Souji’s heart lurches. Does he think Dojima is waiting for them?

He knows he wants him to be. More than anything, he wants him to be. He wants to find Dojima and for Dojima to lift the burden of responsibility from him and tell him what to do, and, amazingly, for once the prospect of taking orders fills Souji with glee. He wants someone else to step up and be the leader, someone else to call the shots, someone else to stand in the limelight. 

His steps slow. His initial excitement over reaching the sea fades. The thought of not finding his uncle fills him with a nauseating dread, and the thought of telling Nanako any of this makes him dizzy. He doesn’t want to distress her, doesn’t want to upset her, but he also suddenly doesn’t want to reach the docks, because he doesn’t want to find out that Dojima isn’t there. 

Souji has always loved cats, and right now, a particular cat comes to him. It’s in a box, and Souji won’t know whether the poor thing is dead or alive until he opens it. He desperately wants it to be alive, but the chance that it might not be stops him from opening the box, makes him leave the room, leave the house, leave the town. He can’t risk seeing something as horrible and cruel as a dead cat, that he’ll let the living one suffer. He knows that’s wrong, but he will. Even though he wants nothing more than to keep the cat safe. 

“I don’t know Nanako,” he sighs. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.” 

“I hope he is,” Nanako says. “I miss him lots!”

Souji swallows. “Me too.” 

In his ear, Minato finally stirs. “If you ever,” he says drowsily, “tell me to wake up again Seta Souji, I swear I will shove my sword so far up your ass that-” 

“Okay,” Souji whistles. “Alright, maybe you should go back to sleep. Now.” 

Minato grumbles about being unfairly woken up, but offers no protest at Souji’s suggestion, and soon enough the familiar warmth of Minato’s head against Souji’s shoulder, and Minato’s chest against Souji’s back, presses against Souji and fills him with a sense of mirthful excitement that nothing can shake. Not even his fears about Dojima. Not even Nanako confronting him on not believing her father is still alive, and not even the half-lie he tell to assure her that he is completely confident Dojima will be waiting for them when they arrive.

 

**v. in-between**

“You cannot seriously tell me that your big plan for once you got here was to steal a boat,” Chie says, incredulous. “You can’t mean that.” 

Yukari shuffles from side to side, her hands clenched nervously behind her back. “Sorry to say, but I do.”

“Well then, this is just great!” Chie has always relied on her hands to emphasise a point during discussion, and they move fast and frantically as she speaks. “Because there are no boats!”

No boats and no Dojima, Souji thinks, holding the crumpled note Nanako has written and asked him to pin to the wall. He wonders if Dojima was there before them, if Dojima waited for them, before assuming they were dead and moving on. He wonders if Dojima left them a hidden note, if he was watching out for them despite being so far away. It feels comforting, but the thought is instantly destroyed by the idea that Dojima is dead. 

“It wasn’t the most thought out plan,” Minato admits. “We didn’t really know what to expect.”

“I did,” Junpei is using Fuuka’s naginata as a crutch, and she is eyeing him carefully. “That’s why I said we should build a signal fire.” 

Yukiko’s eyes light up. “A signal fire?”

Junpei nods. “A huge one. So big, they can see us all the way from Yakushima.” 

“We’re going to build a signal fire?” Yukiko asks, beaming, her hands gripping Chie’s arm and her nails digging in to the flesh slightly. 

Yukari pushes back her fringe. “We’ll... think of something. There must be some kind of boat-”

“We’re building the biggest signal fire you’ve ever seen!” Yukiko cheers. “Oh, I can just picture it now! Towering above us, a smoky figure of ash and defeat, beckoning all to come to our aid! A mysterious blazing spirit we’ve enlisted the help of, flickering in the wind, thankful or the life we created for it but also hungering for destruction! A-” 

“Alright, that’s enough fire metaphors for now, Yukiko,” Chie smiles. “We get the picture.” 

Yukari is looking at Yukiko in bewilderment. Junpei asks, out of the corner of his mouth, “Wait, so we’re going with my plan?” 

“We don’t have a whole lot of options,” Souji shrugs. “It’s worth a try. Plus, Yukiko seems to like it.”

Yukiko lets out a shrill burst of laughter, and Junpei says, “I noticed.”

They propose a vote, and signal fire wins over doing fuck all. Yukiko puts herself in charge of the construction, and drags Chie off with her to look for things that will burn. Souji stays to look after the supplies. He sits on the beach, and Nanako rests against him, exhausted from the long journey and emotionally drained from realising her father wasn’t waiting for her. She falls asleep instantly, and Souji finds peace in listening to her steady breathing, and the slow push and pull of the tide. 

Souji can’t remember the last time he saw the sea. The sky is such a dark blue that he can’t tell where it ends and the water begins, but he can hear it, and therefore knows it’s there. Something about that feels safe. Something about that makes him feel like everything will be okay.

Someone sits down next to him. “Hey,” they say in greeting. 

“Hey,” Souji replies, his feelings of safety multiplying now that Minato is beside him. “How’s the fire?” 

“I’m giving up on it,” Minato sighs. “Amagi is nowhere near the leader you are. She’s resourceful and dedicated but... just kind of naggy and weird. Plus she said she doesn’t trust me to start a fire, so there’s not much else I can do.” Minato offers Souji a crooked smile, and Souji’s heart stammers. 

Souji loves Minato’s smile. He somehow manages to smile with all of his face by only lifting one side of his lips. It’s amazing. Seeing it is the most surreal and wonderful experience, and Souji adores it. 

Minato turns away, and faces the water. “Can you believe we’re nearly there?” He says, his voice soft and full of wonder. 

Souji feels his peace, his content, slowly slip away from him, and fear and uncertainty take it’s place. “No,” he admits, turning to face the water. He can just make out the shape of a rocky landmass in the distance, which Yukari declared to be Yakushima. “No, I really can’t.” 

Minato laces their fingers together, but keeps looking out at the water. At Yakushima. “You know, whatever happens next, we’re in this together, right?”

Souji thinks of all the things that Minato will have to endure alone; blood tests, body scans, perhaps even surgery. He thinks of him being isolated, quarantined, experimented on. He thinks about him giving his life to cure this, to cure everyone. He thinks about how he can’t do anything but watch, can’t do anything but stand from a distance as everything that makes Minato Minato is dissected and analysed and recorded. He thinks about how it’s Minato the Kirijo Group will be interested in, and Minato alone.

“Yeah,” he swallows. “We’re in this together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM SO SORRY THAT LIKE.. NOTHING HAPPENS IN THIS CHAPTER. THE PROMPTS WERE JUST SO HARD AND IM SO TIRED AND HAVE BEEN BUSY TODAY SO THIS CHAPTER PROBABLY THROWS OFF THE PACING OF THE ENTIRE FIC. anyway i wanted to write something nice and . just calm and good after the clusterfuck of killing yosuke that the past few chapters have been. i hope it doesn't let anyone down too badly and that when the plot picks up again tomorrow i can post it on time


	6. II. THE HIGH PRIESTESS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for mentions of character death and for slight depictions of violence. its not really different to earlier chapters but i was frequently upset and distressed while writing this one so i wanted to give everyone a heads up !

Athazagoraphobia (noun) - the fear of forgetting, being forgotten or ignored, or being replaced

 

**i. knowing**

Minato remembers going to the beach as a child. Vaguely. He thinks. It’s crowded, and lively, and he’s too small to go anywhere on his own. He knows he’s too small. He’s clinging to someone’s hand. His sister doesn’t understand things the way he does, doesn’t understand age, doesn’t understand limitation, doesn’t understand that there are some things she simply cannot do, and she’s charging forwards, charging alone, determined to prove herself, to make her worth clear.

She was like that until the very end, Minato thinks as Souji lets out a soft breath. His head is slumped into Minato’s shoulder, his slender fingers entwined with Minato’s crooked, stubby ones. The sensation is humbling. It’s so comforting it’s almost numbing, in the fact that Minato doesn’t have the space for any emotion to overpower his content. He thinks of the night he fell asleep at the campfire, and how this is almost the exact opposite. He slept on Souji’s shoulder by burning embers; Souji sleeps on his by a rushing sea.

He is so very, very tired.

Grey eyes, aching eyes, roll upwards to face the stars as they twinkle into pale blues and pinks and purples. The sky shifts in anticipation of the warmth the sun will bring. Minato claws at sand with his free hand, clenches it in his fist, then lets it fall slowly. He repeats the process. Eventually, he starts counting how long it takes to trickle to the ground. He becomes a human hourglass in an attempt to pass the time. His eyelids flicker, shutting for seconds, minutes, but he cannot let himself fall asleep. He can’t.

Minato is certain that it is coming to an end. That everything is coming to an end. Not just their journey. Everything.

Even him.

If this is it, if he’s dying... Minato doesn’t want to miss a moment. He’s already slept so much. He doesn’t understand why he’s so exhausted, so weak, so sick. He knows that he doesn’t deserve to end it nicely, not after everything he’s done, not after the way he let everyone else die, but he’s selfish, and, for the first time in an eternity, he’s scared. Not of saying goodbye; he’s grateful just to have the chance for farewells. Not of what comes next, because whatever that is his sister and his parents and Ryoji found out first, and even if it’s nothing, at least he’s catching up with them. He scared of letting everyone down. He’s so sick. His bones are charred, his skin is molten; every moment is agony, every moment is a battle with himself that he’s sure he’s losing.

He’s scared that he’s not immune, and that every member of the party he is with is in danger. He’s scared that he’s about to bring that danger to the Kirijo Group, to the only people who have a chance of stopping the outbreak. He buries his hand in the sand and chews his lip. He bites and pulls until it splits and cracks and his mouth fills with the bitter tang of his own blood.

When he dies, the people he loved die with him. Ryoji dies with him. His sister dies with him. When he dies, their deaths, the things they believed in, the things they fought for, are rendered null. Meaningless. Just another statistic, another number, another notch on the tally chart, on the body count. He’s scared of that happening more than anything.

They’ll be remembered, Minato thinks, in an attempt to reassure himself. Fuuka will carry his sister’s memory on; she’s doing it now, by fighting with her naginata. Junpei and Yukari are still alive, still fighting, as well. It’s not much of a legacy to leave behind; three scraggly teenage kids with filthy uniforms and in desperate need of a haircut. But it’s his legacy. His sister’s legacy. Ryoji’s legacy.

In spite of it all, he smiles. He pulls his fingers from the sand, choosing instead to run them softly over the topmost, finest layer. He traces figures of eight until a sharp prod jolts him from his revere.

“Hey,” says Junpei, tipping his hat.

“Hey,” Minato replies, tilting his neck upwards to look at the boy stood above him.

“We finished the signal fire,” Junpei rolls his shoulder over in the direction Minato remembers Yukiko decided the fire would be built. “We’re not gonna light it until it get’s dark again though. So pretty crappy timing I guess, since the sun’s coming up.”

Minato blinks, and brushes a few stray strands of his fringe from his eyes. Something inside of him snaps and sends his heart plummeting down. The sensation that everything will be over soon pulls his heart even further, and whispers into his thoughts that this could be the last time he sees Junpei. He lets his widening eyes take in the tattered baseball cap (did Junpei even like baseball? Minato realises now he never even asked, never even thought to ask), the open blazer and the faded blue shirt. There's a tear going between two buttons and across the shirt, so part of Junpei’s abdomen is exposed. It’s littered with cuts and bruises. Junpei’s face looks weird from upside-down, but also still looks like Junpei. Minato thinks, even though they’ve been through hell and back, Iori Junpei is still Iori Junpei, still the boy on his floor in the dorm who stayed up too late playing video games too loudly, and didn’t study or do homework, and always asked to copy from him. Yet, somehow, at the same time this boy is unrecognisable. His eyes are sad, impossibly sad. Junpei laughs and teases like always, but there’s a lingering regret, a lingering sorrow, an almost bitterness underlying everything he does and says. This Junpei has changed. This Junpei has grown from experiences the boy Minato went to school with would consider fiction. He feels strangely proud. He’s not sure why, and also is surprised that he could ever feel anything related to pride in regards to Iori Junpei. It’s a nice sensation though, one that burns through his previous existential dread.

Despite experiencing this barrage of emotion, Minato replies with only, “Our shitty luck strikes again.”

Junpei smirks. “Doesn’t it always?” His voice is light, and half a chuckle. He slaps Minato’s shoulder. It should register as a soft pat, but Minato’s weary bones and screaming cells process it in a violent shudder that shakes his whole body. He does his best to hide his wince. Junpei knocks his hat again. “Let’s hope it doesn’t strike again tomorrow. Anyway, we’re all gonna head inside and try and get some sleep. Wanna join us or did you rest up already?”

“I rested.” The lie is instantaneous. Junpei grimaces.

“Okay dude, I don’t want to worry you,” he slows down, “but if that’s how you look after a long night of sweet ass dreams, then you might be, uh-”

“Worse than you thought?” Minato suggests. “Dying, maybe?”

Junpei doesn’t reply. Minato sighs.

“I’m fine, really,” he mumbles, looking away.

“I’m worried about you,” Junpei almost whispers. Minato freezes. “I think we all are,” he continues. “Like, what will happen when we get to the base and like, y’know... You really don’t seem like you’re in the greatest shape and you’ve been sleeping so much and-”

Minato snaps, “I’ve noticed, but thanks for pointing that out.”

Junpei pauses for a second, then says softly, “When Souji-kun wakes up, why don’t the two of you come find us. You should take care of yourself, dude. You matter to a whole lot of people. And I don’t mean like, as the saviour of mankind or whatever. I mean as the kid from before. The kid you are now. As you. I don’t know, dude. Shit. I ain’t too good with words, y’know?”

Minato nods. “I understand. Thanks, I guess. I’ll think about it.”

Junpei pats him again, and Minato listens to sand crunch under his shoes as he walks away. He considers the offer, rolling the thought of sleeping around in his mind. He’s so tired. He’s so very, very tired.

Souji snores softly from his shoulder, and something about it calms Minato down, makes Minato feel safe. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, lets his head slump against Souji’s, and with the glow of a new day shining gently on his face, finally allows his eyelids to drop, and himself to drift off into sleep.

 

  
**ii. psychic**

“Okay,” says Junpei, his hands raised in a position of surrender and submission, “I know what you’re all thinking; how the hell are we gonna start a big fucking fire with no matches?”

“That is one of the many, many things I am asking myself,” Yukari is blunt, deadpan. “Others include; why are we listening to Junpei-kun, and when will he get to his point?”

Junpei stamps his feet a second. “Yuka-tan! I had a whole speech planned and now you’ve blown it for me!”

Fuuka covers her mouth and stiffles a giggle. Yukari rolls her eyes. “Fine, fine, I’m sorry. Carry on.”

Junpei narrows his eyes and glares at her. “As I was saying, you’re all wondering how we will start this fire without matches, but! Worry no more! Allow me to present, da dada daa! Amagi Yukiko!”

He points his arms towards her, and shakes his hands. Yukiko waves. From Minato’s side, Souji says, “I didn’t know we were out of matches... I think I have some in my pack?”

“Nope, no, no,” Yukiko shakes her head. “I have been practising starting fires with rocks for years, and I’m going to put it to good use!”

Chie stretches. “Also aren’t your matches the ones that got waterlogged when Yos-”

She clears her throat instead of finishing her sentence, but that somehow makes the situation seem more tense. Souji swallows, and nods. “You’re right. That was me. Of course.”

Minato hopes that when he dies his name doesn’t bring the same response. Even he acts like he’s forgotten all about Yosuke. It’s easier that way. He hates thinking it, but it’s easier that way. He feels his arm reach towards Souji’s almost instinctively, and grabs his hand. Souji doesn’t comment, doesn’t even look away from the conversation he’s having with Chie, but he takes his hand and runs his thumb along the back of Minato’s palm, like he can sense his nerves.

Minato feels sick. He suddenly wants to bend over with the pain of it all, the stress of it all, the uncertainty of it all. He keeps telling everyone, keeps telling himself, that whatever happens next is fine, that whatever happens next will happen, that he doesn’t care much one way or the other but he does, he does he does, and everything hurts so fucking much and everything happens with such sheer intensity that he wants to drop to his knees and beg for release.

He doesn’t. He just stands there. Every part of him feels like it’s boiling and yet he is motionless, frozen. His lungs are full of rocks and his heart is jammed in his throat. He can’t get any air past its throbbing but his lungs are heavy anyway, and they’re breaking, breaking, breaking. Everything is breaking. Everything is collapsing. Everything is tumbling down around him but his companions - his _friends_ \- are so calm, so hopeful, so certain that tomorrow will bring safety. He pushes back his fringe and rests his hand against his forehead. A keen layer of icy sweat coats his scouring skin. He gulps, but his throat is dry. There’s nothing to swallow but his fear, and if he attempts that he knows he’ll only choke.

His grip on Souji’s hand tightens.

They’ve already forgotten the last member of their group who died. They’ve already banned and pushed memories of Yosuke away. What if they do that to him? What if he’s just an embarrassment that has to be hid from the next person to kiss Souji? What if he’s just some sob story told to the next group they meet up with? _Oh yeah, we thought we found the cure, but actually he was just a stubborn asshole who took way too fucking long to die_.

Minato wishes suddenly that it wasn’t taking him so long to die. He wishes the world would just swallow him up then so he wouldn’t have to think, wouldn’t have to hurt, wouldn’t have to do anything.

When did he start feeling so terrified all the time?

He thinks he might faint. He leans against Souji. He can hear Yukiko slamming rocks together. They’re all gathered round a wall of wood built from desks and doors and chairs and whatever else that burns they had managed to find in the buildings surrounding the port. Wads of paper are cleverly placed at strategic intervals to spread fire, and Chie and Yukari seemed to have found some kind of oil that they’re sure will go up with a bang. Everything sounds so distant. God, if he’s going to faint, don’t let it be in front of everyone. Didn’t Junpei say they were worried about him? They didn’t need to worry about him. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve it.

He sees the sparks flicker, and Fuuka slam her hands together. His shoulders shudder, his knees are weak. Souji places his hands either side of Minato’s arms and holds him, steadies him.

“Everything okay?” he asks.

“I need to sit down,” Minato blurts, still fighting the sensation that he’s going to vomit. Souji nods, and starts dropping to his knees. Minato goes down with him, slowly, guided. He can feel everyone else’s eyes on him, but his own are blistering and his vision is cloudy and he just wants to sleep. He scrunches his eyelids tight, hoping that will cool his eyes, will help everything calm down. He can hear his heavy breathing and his heartbeat pounding in his ears. Like he’s calling through a megaphone, Souji’s voice is loud but distant. It cries his name.

“I’m fine,” Minato pants. “Fine.”

The heat of the fire glides over him. Minato assumes it’s the fire, because it somehow manages to blaze hotter than his blood, but it could be Souji’s body temperature, or his own. Minato’s been burning for so long now his ability to process heat has probably evaporated.

He takes a brief moment to hope that this isn’t the end he felt coming. He didn’t want it to be sudden. He thought he would get a warning, thought he would get goodbyes, thought there would be more than this.

He’s wrong, evidently, and that’s the last thought he has time to process before searing heat engulfs his entire body, and his ears contort with a scream he thinks is his own, but that sounds so much like an agonised animal that he is loathe to believe could be anything human.

  


**iii. oracle**

He’s resting his head in Fuuka’s lap when he wakes up. He knows it’s Fuuka immediately, because she has this aura about her, this comforting presence that ebbs out of her and surrounds the people she loves in a bubble of safety. Minato feels safe as he peels his eyelids apart. He recognises the safety as the kind she brings, the kind that only Fuuka can bring.

There’s something heavy and wet and cool on his forehead. He reaches a hand - his uninfected hand - towards it, closing his eyes. He pushes down on it, and feels droplets of what he assumes is water dribble down his face. He sighs, and opens his eyes again. His dry lips part with a slight snap, and he opens his mouth to say something, but Fuuka gets there first.

“I wouldn’t speak just yet,” she says softly. “Sit up and drink something first. Can you get up on your own?”

Minato doesn’t need to answer, because Fuuka’s hands are on his shoulders and they’re guiding him into a sitting position. He holds whatever’s on his forehead in place and scrunches up his eyes. His head is throbbing and his teeth itch, but other than that, Minato feels strangely alive.

He pulls his hand and the strip of fabric down. It looks like it was torn from a Gekkoukan blazer. He realises suddenly he isn’t wearing his blazer, and that the biting wind is sending shivers through his exposed skin. He drops the wet strip, and grabs his scarf, pulling it over his mouth and nose. He closes his eyes and breathes in deeply, letting it fill his lungs, feeling his chest expand, enjoying the sensation of being able to breathe.

Fuuka asks, “Feeling better?”

Minato nods, and croaks, “Wh- What did you do?”

“I cleaned your wound!” Fuuka’s voice is pitchy. It always cracks when she’s proud of herself; Minako used to talk about how cute it is that it breaks, and how she loves the tones of her speech and the little noises Fuuka makes. Minato feels his lip twitch hearing that pride. He doesn’t have time to smile, because Fuuka immediately starts scolding him. “I know you don’t like looking at it, but you need to take care of yourself. All that gunk that was oozing out of it? I’ve said this before, but I think that’s what makes the Shadows go into hibernation. I think maybe that’s why you’ve been so tired lately; you hadn’t cleaned any of it, and it was just building up.”

Minato brings both of his hands up to his face, and rubs his eyes tiredly. He rests his elbows on his knees and moves the flesh on his face in circular motions. His vision alternates between a black void and splotches of light, to his own shaggy split ends, dangling just outside the corners of his eyes. “God,” he pulls his face out of his hands and looks upwards. “God, of course it was that. Of course.”

Fuuka pushes herself up, and offers him and hand. He doesn’t take it. He just sits there, stewing in his own poor life choices for a moment. “I washed your jacket,” she informs him. “It’s drying by the fire. Let’s go warm up, okay?”

Minato closes his eyes, and nods again. It’s easier than speaking, which is hard both because his hollow throat stings like his neck has been sliced in a lattice of scars, and also because his brain is too full of thoughts, too full of memories, too full of sounds and smells and senses, to manage to formulate words without the stress of speaking making him feel sick. Physically, Minato thinks he’s in the best place he’s been in aons. Mentally, he’s a mess. He’s awake, he’s finally awake, but all he wants to do is sleep again. Shut everything out. Meltdown. Suspend it all, put it all off for just a little while longer. Two armies face each other in his eyes; one attacks from his eyelids, the other from the corners, and each stab, each prick, of their swords is the burning sensation that tells him he’s on the verge of tears. Minato doesn’t know when the last time he cried was. Minato doesn’t know why he wants to cry.

He takes Fuuka’s hand and lets her pull him up. He puts the other hand in his pocket. She leads him to the signal fire, and he drops his neck down, staring at the ground, watching his boots sink into the sand and then drag themselves out just to sink again.

The buzzing in his head stops when Fuuka says, “We used to talk about going to the beach so often... I almost hate that we’re here without them.”

Minato’s biting his lips again. His throat is hoarse, but he somehow manages to choke out, “I’m sorry.” Fuuka looks back at him and halts. Minato lets his gaze flick from the ground to her puzzled face to the ground again. Her eyebrows slant upwards, furrowed in confusion, and Minato inhales, steadying his thoughts, steadying his voice, steadying himself, to explain. “It’s my fault they’re not. I should have-”

“It’s no one’s fault,” Fuuka snaps abruptly, the clears her throat and begins, gently, “No one knew this was going to happen. No one could have stopped it, or changed it, or fixed it. And that’s okay. It’s okay because we’re still here. Which is what they would want for us.”

The words don’t really reach Minato. They’re sweet, but wrong. He left his sister to die. He left Ryoji to die. No one else saw them in their final moments. No one else had a chance do anything, He did. He did and he just left them. He left them before they could leave him. It’s a weird way of looking at it, since technically they left him anyway. “They suffered,” he rasps. “They suffered because of me.”

Fuuka is shaking her head. “It doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t.”

“I just left them there. I just left them there to die.”

“ _We_ left them there,” Fuuka squeezes Minato’s hand. She shakes her head softly, and her eyes gleam. Minato clenches his free fist. “We’re a team. None of us went back for them. None of us tried to help them, or put them out of their misery.”

Minato watches as she blinks, and her short and sparse lashes catch the corners of the few tears brave enough to splurt out. “Do you blame yourself?” he asks. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t want to.

Fuuka slowly brings her hand to her chest. She nods once, and looks away. Minato pulls his hand out of her grip. His thoughts stop. Everything stops. He thinks of all the chances someone could have said something to Fuuka, someone could have asked if she was okay. She takes a shuddering breath, and whispers, “She didn’t... I should have known. I should have known.”

“She didn’t want you to,” Minato tries to ignore that Fuuka is wiping away tears with the palm of her hand. “She didn’t even want me to know.”

Fuuka wraps her arms around herself and hugs them tight. She’s sucking on her bottom lip and trembling slightly and Minato is so out of touch with his own emotions that he has no idea to respond to hers. “I couldn’t even say goodbye,” she coughs, attempting to repress a series of violent sobs. “It keeps me up at night... the fact that I don’t even remember the last things I said to her. Because, to me, they weren’t going to be the last things I got a chance to say.”

Almost as though it’s in response to Fuuka’s reaction, Minato feels himself shutting down, feels himself forgetting how to feel, what to do, what to say. Something about that is good, though. He can treat this logically. His words won’t be tainted by his regrets or his upset or his anger. There’s a lot of anger, somewhere, that he’s never dealt with; a resentment for being left behind and forced into his sister’s leaderly position, frustration at having to clear up her mess and explain that she’s not coming back, and this fetid, rotten anxiety left over from the time between him finding out she was bitten and her leaving the group to find somewhere nice to die.

“You said yourself, no one knew what was going to happen,” Minato mumbles. “You can’t predict the future, Yamagishi. None of us can. Minako came close to it, I guess. She knew she- She knew what was going to happen to her,” his lip trembles. He thinks of how his sister promised to fight it, of how she warned him she was getting weaker, of how one day she was going to leave and just not come back, and when that happened he’d know, and he’d make the others move on without her. He thinks of the glances they’d share, of the way her mask would slip ever so slightly and he’d immediately recognise the pain she was in, of how he couldn’t help her. Did the others feel like that now, in regards to taking care of him? He shivers, and shrinks into his scarf - Ryoji’s scarf. “She didn’t want you to see her like that. She wanted you to remember her as human.”

“I never saw her as human,” Fuuka stares at something downwards and to her left. Minato thinks she’s just avoiding looking at him. It’s probably hard to talk about her with someone who shares so much of her appearance. “She was always an angel to me.” She smiles lightly, takes a watery inhale, and closes her eyes. She wipes the back of her arm against her face, then fixes her gaze on Minato. She extends her hand. “You know,” she chuckles, “the signal fire is really quite impressive. I’d like to show it to you, if you’d let me.”

Minato clasps his hand around hers. He nods. She pulls him along again, and they fall back into silence. It occurs to him that they haven’t really addressed either of their problems, that nothing’s been fixed, that they’re both going to shut everything away until they have to air their guilt out again. Something about that scares him. Something about it seems right.

Maybe there are some things, some feelings, that are better left undwelt on, left unsaid, left forgotten in the back of the abyss of the mind.

Minato hopes he’ll live to forget his.

 

 

**iv. secretive**

They don’t talk about anyone else they’ve lost. Minato wonders if that’s out of respect for him. At the same time, something about it feels wrong. He supposes he understands why they don’t talk about Chidori; she was never really close to either of them. He thinks they don’t talk about Ken to protect him. No one talks about Ken. He realises as he swallows a lump in his throat that Ken’s like their Yosuke; someone they loved, someone they lost, someone they can’t speak about or bring themselves to remember because it’s too hard, too difficult. He feels like that’s selfish. No matter how hard it is to remember him, it was harder on Ken. Minato clenches his fist for a moment at the injustice of it all. Of dying and being forgotten. Of suffering and having that glossed over, of never having it respected or appreciated because it’s too hard for the living to process.

But it is hard. His hand falls limp and open. It is too hard for the living to process. Too hard for him to process. So he isn’t going to ever talk about Ken, or how unfair it was, or how unfair it is they don’t mention him. Because Minato can’t mention Ken either.

He tries to stop thinking about anything after he decides that.

The signal fire is impressive. Fuuka hadn’t lied. Minato feels his eyes water with its smoke before he sees the hazy amber glow in the distance, and can smell burning fumes and wood before he can hear it. He says, “Why did you take me so far away?”

Fuuka shrugs, smiling. “We were worried keeping you by a fire if you were feverous might be more dangerous. No one really knows anything about medicine, so...”

“It’s big,” Minato observes as they approach the blazing mass. “Really... big.”

“Not what you were expecting, is it?” Fuuka chuckles. “I just hope it’s big enough.”

Minato doesn’t see how it can’t be. There’s a steady wall of flame travelling across a stretch of beach that seems too large for his teammates to have assembled in just one evening, and the items stacked upon it stretch upwards in straight pillars of smoke, flickering in reds and oranges and tinted with blues and pinks. He’s in awe. Something about it makes him feel humbled, small, insignificant. It glares against the dark, peaceful sky, and the night would be soft and still did it not tint the air with a feeling of urgency. He doesn’t know which parts of the fire to look, and feels his gaze move in jagged lines from one part to the next.

He isn’t sure how long he just stands there, watching, but it’s a nice sensation. Somehow, the fire makes him feel empty, and complete. He’s hollow. He can feel himself breathing, but he can’t really register anything else. Fuuka doesn’t say anything. Maybe she can tell he needs this weird moment of isolation and comfort.

His name, called by an excited, high pitched voice, pulls him away from the fire, and he turns just in time to feel the impact of Nanako slamming herself against his stomach. He feels his muscles look up. The contact shocks him. He places a hand on Nanako’s shoulder, and pats her back, feeling his emotions and thoughts forcefully collide back into his chest and head. The jolting impact of his concept of self and of the girl hugging him tightly is a jarring sensation, but he knows showing that will upset her. So he chooses not to show anything.

She says, “I was scared you weren’t coming back.”

Minato’s lips tremble, and he rests his hands on her shoulders properly, softly, a symbol of affection. There’s no words. There’s not even an ability to speak, to process, to understand. He just lets her hold him. He just lets her come to terms with the fact that he came back.

He tries not to think about the people he wants back.

She’s not crying when she peels herself away, but her eyes are red and raw and his shirt is sticky, so they both know she was at some point. She’s beaming ear to ear, and she asks, “Do you like the fire? It’s so big! I helped make it! It kind of exploded when we lit it! It was like, BOOM CRACKLE BOOM!” Nanako throws her hands up and mimics the whooshing fire. Minato supposes that was due to that oil. “Souji said I wasn’t allowed to get too close, but guess what!” Her voice drops to a whisper. “I got really close anyway! Oh, don’t tell him though!”

Minato nods slightly, so she knows the knowledge is safe with him. She laughs.

“I’m really happy you’re better again,” her cheeks are red, and her eyes are shining. “Souji promised you would be. I think he was scared too though.”

“Nanako-chan,” Fuuka intervenes softly, perhaps suspecting that words like that would make Minato feel guilty, “who’s on watch right now?”

Nanako turns to face her. “Me! And big bro too of course!”

Fuuka’s brows furrow. “But... But you’re nowhere near the-”

Slapping her hand against her face, Nanako cries, “Oh! Oh no, I almost forgot! I just got so excited!”

“Forgot what?” Fuuka asks. Nanako takes Minato’s hand in her own and stands jumping and laughing and pulling him with her.

“We saw it!” she giggles. “We saw a boat! Souji’s telling everyone else right now! Come on, come on! Let’s go! We can finally go!”

 

  
**v. influential**

His blazer feels soft against his freshly cleaned wound. His hand is tightly entwined with Souji’s, and for once, Souji is the one who is holding on too tightly, who is clinging to him for support. He’d peppered Minato’s forehead and face and neck with soft kisses after he’d seen he was okay. Minato had still felt he was only half there, but it had been reassuring. Minato likes remembering he matters. It’s hard. It’s always been hard. Souji and Nanako always seem to remind him though, somehow. He’s thankful for that.

Yukari had said it was best they congregate by the fire; whoever the Kirijo Group sent would likely come to investigate it. They passed the time in silence, everyone too anxious or excited to speak. Yukiko plays with Chie’s hair as she lies in her lap, Junpei paces, and Nanako hums softly to herself. She’s making sandcastles.

The noise that breaks the silence comes from behind them. It’s a mixture of hushed commands and static and the ruffling of waterproof combat clothing against itself, and it’s accompanied by the clicking of guns. The clicking makes Minato think of Yosuke, and wince.

A stern, gravelly voice calls out, “Everyone on your feet!” It makes Fuuka flinch in surprise, and Nanako scrambles to her feet and grabs Souji’s hand. Chie pulls herself up into a battle stance. Junpei yelps. Minato is caught off guard by how typical all of their actions are, by how individual and personal they are. It’s comforting.

His first impression of the Kirijo Group comes from what looks like a highly-specialised military unit, in thick coats and baggy trousers, heavy boots, bulletproof vests and helmets. The one who’d spoken has broad shoulders and a square jaw, but a soft, thin face. His eyes are cold, his nose is crooked, like it’s been broken and reset too many times. The corner of a bandage peaks out from his helmet. Minato wonders what happened to his forehead to result in that. He doesn’t know enough about guns to guess what kind the man is holding, but he gestures with it and with a tilt of his head, as he barks, “All of you, in a straight line. Now.”

Minato ends up wedged between Yukari and Souji, at the end furthest from the soldier yelling. He thinks Souji maneuvers him to end up in that position. His hand tightens around Minato’s. He’s shaking. Minato squeezes his hand reassuringly, the way Souji has done for him so often. Minato can do that. Minato isn’t scared. He’s strangely numb, like he’s watching the situation from far away, from a stranger’s perspective, like he has no attachment to the events unfolding here.

One way or another, it ends tonight.

The soldier scans from left to right, taking them all in, then grabs the speaker on his shoulder, and turns his back on them. The others with him keep guns trained on them. The first soldier is clearly trying to get some privacy, but the still night carries his words back to Minato easily, so he’s sure everyone else can hear too.

“It’s a bunch of teenagers,” he growls. “I know, but get this; they’re wearing Gekkoukan uniforms.” A pause. His commander is probably speaking. “Me too. They’re pretty torn up, so maybe. I don’t know, I haven’t asked them yet. How do you want to precede?”

There’s static, and then he finally turns around and approaches them. His eyes trail a straight line from Yukari to Yukiko, all the way at the other end, and he booms, “My name is Sanada Akihiko. I’m here on behalf of the Kirijo Group to investigate the source of an explosion earlier this evening. I trust that was down to you?”

“Yes, sir,” comes Yukari’s voice, confident, strong, unwavering. Minato thinks for a moment how Minako should have passed the baton of leadership to her instead of keeping it in the family. “We did it to attract your attention.”

Sanada cocks an eyebrow. “Well, you have it.”

Minato turns his head to face Yukari slightly. Her gaze is unfaltering. She nods, her eyes locked steadily on Sanada’s. “We aren’t here to hurt you; we’re here to ask you for help.”

“You’re asking us for shelter, I assume,” Sanada sighs. “I thought stuff like this was over.”

Yukari makes a noise like she isn’t done speaking, and Minato knows she was going to mention him, but Sanada turns around before she gets the chance. “They want us to take them in,” he growls. “I know. I know. I know. Look, Mitsuru, they have a kid with them.” Static. “Younger than ten. Yeah. Yes, it’s definitely Gekkoukan.” A longer pause. “Well, no, that doesn’t necessarily mean we owe them shit.” He pushes his helmet off and lets it hang around the back of his neck. “I understand. Yeah, I’d feel bad about that too. Okay. Understood.”

Souji’s hand is squeezing Minato’s so tightly he worries his bones will burst.

Sanada pivots to face them. His hair underneath the helmet is a cropped silver. Minato wonders if he’s older than he originally assumed. “Kirijo wants to meet with them,” he says to a slimmer, less stocky soldier next to him. Minato notices that she also has silver hair, though this time it’s long and worn in what Minato assumes is a ponytail, stopping at the soldier’s hips. He thinks maybe having silver hair is a prerequisite for joining the Kirijo Group. Or maybe it’s grey with stress. “I’m gonna check them myself, so that any mistakes are my responsibility. Once I give them the okay, you line them up.”

The soldier nods. “And if you don’t give them the okay?” she whispers. Minato notices she has a regional accent. He doesn’t hear it well enough to place it.

“I’ll take care of that myself too,” Sanada sighs.

Minato swallows.

“Alright,” Sanada’s yelling again, “we’ve accepted your request. We’re gonna take you in. I’ll check you for any signs of infection, and then my colleague here will escort you back to our ship. If you cooperate, we can guarantee your safety. If you’re difficult, we can’t. It’s as simple as that.”

Souji turn to Minato. His gaze is pleading. He’s begging him to say something, to act, to show Sanada the real reason they're here. Minato just lets go of Souji’s hand. His muscles twinge and his body groans and locks itself into place.

Minato can’t make himself do anything but look away.

He hears Yukiko thank Sanada for approving her, and she’s quickly followed by Chie yelling at her to slow down. He recognises Fuuka’s soft footsteps, and listens to Junpei flirtily introduce himself to their escort. He keeps his head down. Nanako refuses to join the other’s without Souji, and Sanada speaks to her sympathetically, like she understands, promising he’ll make her brother’s inspection as quick as he can. When Souji’s cleared, he reluctantly allows himself to be pulled away by Nanako to stand with the others. Minato takes a deep breath, and looks up. Souji’s eyes are wide and desperate. He’s shaking his head and dragging his feet and Minato can’t think what to say, can’t think what to do. It’s too late by this point. Anything he says will make it look like he’s just trying to justify himself, like he’s lying. Sanada’s gaze fixes on him, and Minato steps forward.

He thinks he hears Yukari whisper, “Please,” but he’s too angry and his inability to function, at the fact he’s wasted everything they fought for, at the fact he’s about to throw it all away at the final checkpoint, to process it.

“I know it’s cold,” Sanada says, “but I’m gonna have to ask you to take your scarf off for me.”

Minato nods, and slowly unwraps it from his neck. The cold doesn’t matter; his insides are icy with regret and disappointment and the acceptance of how brutally he’s fucked everything up. He feels Sanada’s gloved fingers push his hair away and run across the skin on his neck. He grunts, satisfied, then asks, “Could you take your blazer off for me.”

A deep rattling breath, followed by the thumping of his heart. Minato nods, then shrugs it off. He closes his eyes. He wishes he could close his ears too, but the heavy pounding of his heart is the only thing he hears. In the distance, he registers Yukari lifting her hair and showing the back of her neck. In the distance, he registers Sanada telling the rest of his men to escort the others away. In the distance, he thinks he hears his sister laughing, and the shock of it makes him open his eyes.

Sanada is shaking his head sadly. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m so sorry.”

Minato feels something jut into his stomach. His eyes widen. He can’t open his mouth, can’t breathe, can’t feel anything but the slight pressure pushing into him. In a strangely intimate gesture, Sanada rests his forehead against Minato’s, and puts the other hand behind him. Minato realises he’s just pushing him closer to the gun. He guesses that will make the bullet sound quieter. “I know you probably came here thinking we can help. I know you came here looking for a cure. We don’t have one. This is the only thing I can do for you.”

Muffled shouting has Sanada loosen his grip on Minato, and Minato jumps when a voice from behind Sanada shouts, “Wait!”

Sanada grabs Minato by the hair tightly, and he winces, before turning around. Minato cranes his neck to see over his shoulder. Yukari is clutching a stitch in her stomach and panting. She drops to her knees. “Please... Wait...” she begs. “Minato... You have to...”

“Oi! You! Back with the rest of the group!” The accented soldier is crying. She has her gun pointed on Yukari, but her arm wrapped around a writhing Souji, who’s attempting to join her. “I’m warning you!” she yells, but Souji screams louder.

“Ask him how old it is!” he cries. “Please! Please, Sanada-san, ask him how old it is!”

“Labrys, what the hell is going on?” Sanada demands. His body shakes as he bellows, and the shakes make the tugging on Minato’s hair stronger and harsher on his raw scalp.

“I dunno, Sir,” she replies. “They won’t go! They’re kickin’ up a helluva fuss! The girl even took two or three men down!”

Yukari wheezes again, and Sanada’s gaze snaps towards her. “Please, ask him.” 

Sanada chews the inside of his cheeks, then turns sharply to Minato. “How old is it.”

Minato can feel himself hyperventilating, and opening his mouth makes him feel sick, but he somehow chokes out, “A year at the end of spring.”

“What?” Sanada hisses.

“It’ll be... a year,” Minato takes time to recover between words, “at the end of spring.”

“Impossible,” Sanada spits, but his grip loosens with shock. “That’s impossible.”

Minato pulls himself out of Sanada’s reach, and stumbles backwards, shaking. “We didn’t come here looking for a cure,” he promises, pulling his left arm up across his chest. “We brought the cure to you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LMAO THE END OF THE LAST ONE WHEN IM LIKE "ILL UPDATE ON TIME"  
> i'm sorry this is literally two months late. theres a lot going on here and i havent been stable enough or had enough free time to sit down and write it. i hope i havent kept anyone waiting in suspense for too long. the final chapter will probably come after saturday (i have an exam then and i really need to focus on revising for it) but i promise you this fic is getting finished. i hope the fact this is nearly twice as long as most of the other chapters before it makes up for the two month wait !  
> also i can finally add akihiko to the character list . hes going on  
> thank you for supporting me this long and for this far !! i hope this fic can still be everything you hoped it would be when you smashed that mf read.  
> also ! i recently made a cheeky mix for this fic out of the music i regularly listen to while writing it, which u can find here : http://8tracks.com/megidolaon/to-the-spirits-of-the-dead ( I DONT KNO HOW TO LIKE ACTUALLY EMBED LINKS INTO SUMMARIES I HAVE NO IUDEA HOW TO USE THIS HELL FIC SITE )

**Author's Note:**

> may have bitten off more than i can chew by being ridiculously over ambitious with this... aaaaa...  
> anyway this is like 3 hrs late in my timezone but hopefully not everywhere else. ive always wanted to write a zombie apocalypse au, esp after reading "last fall" which has been one of my fave fics ever for so so long so like, when people on twitter recommended i do an au for protagshipping week that was what popped into my mind
> 
> usually i write better than this i swear im just so frazzled rn from the sheer amount going on. lets hope tomorrow is better. also koromaru was originally meant to be one of the gekkoukan group like he's in my plans and everything but it didn't really end up going the way i planned it and i couldnt really work out how to tie him in
> 
> anyway thanks for reading & if u want to hang out and talk about protagshipping u can find me as megidolaon on tumblr and runicshield on twitter !! bye lads


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